White House response to Donald J. Trump letter claiming executive privilege

by Dana Remus

June 22, 2022

Debra Steidel Wall
Acting Archivist of the United States
National Archives and Records Administration
700 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20408

Dear Ms. Wall:

I write in further response to your communications of March 9 and March 22, 2022, informing us that former President Trump has made claims of executive privilege with regard to a subset of documents requested by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (the “Select Committee”) that you provided to the White House for review on February 21 and March 7, 2022. You have requested President Biden’s views with respect to the disclosure of those documents to the Committee and on the former President’s claims of privilege.

In my prior communications, I noted that the White House had reached an accommodation with the Select Committee to prioritize documents related to certain custodians and that some of those records were pending review by the White House. The White House has now completed its review of additional records from the February 21st and March 7th notifications. Identifying numbers for those records have been provided by my staff.

As to the records for which the White House has now completed its review, President Biden has considered the former President’s claims, and I have engaged in consultations with the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. The President has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified. As I wrote in my letter to you on October 8, 2021:

[T]he insurrection that took place on January 6, and the extraordinary events surrounding it, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again. Congress has a compelling need in service of its legislative functions to understand the circumstances that led to … the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal Government since the Civil War.… Constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.

Accordingly, President Biden does not uphold the former President’s assertions of privilege as to any of the records for which review is now complete. He therefore instructs you, in accord with Section 4(b) of Executive Order 13489, to provide to the Select Committee the records in that set identified as privileged by the former President. In light of the urgency of the Select Committee’s need for the information, the President further instructs you to provide those records 15 days after your notification to the former President, unless prohibited by court order. If the 15-day period expires on a weekend or holiday, you should provide the records to the Select Committee on the next business day.

Some of the documents in question involved litigation in which certain parties were represented by the Department of Justice. In order to protect longstanding Executive Branch interests, production of those records should be in camera. A complete list of records for in camera review has been provided by my staff. Moreover, consistent with my prior instructions, non-responsive content in otherwise responsive records should be redacted as appropriate in any documents produced to the Select Committee.

Sincerely,

Dana A. Remus

Dana A. Remus
Counsel to the President

WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL'S OFFICE
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