January 6 Committee Drops Demand for Some Trump Presidential Records

The United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has dropped its request for some records from President Donald Trump’s administration, though it continues to seek others that the former president says are protected by executive privilege.

The change occurred after White House counsel from the Biden administration informed the committee that some records it sought concerned secret national security matters — or else were completely irrelevant to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

CNN reported:

The White House said some of the records the House asked for potentially could concern state secrets or executive privilege because they were part of high-level national security deliberations, according to a letter from the White House counsel’s office released Tuesday. The House said it would “defer” its requests for those records.

Another set of the documents that the House dropped pursuing may not have been all that helpful anyway because while they were created on dates the committee asked for, they did not pertain to the panel’s investigation, the White House letter said. As a result, the committee won’t be getting hundreds of pages of National Security Council records at this time.

The Biden White House has tried to waive executive privilege to the other documents the committee is still seeking. Several aides to President Trump have nevertheless argued that they cannot comply with the committee’s subpoenas because it is unclear whether executive privilege can still apply after a presidency, and they want the courts to decide the boundaries before taking actions that would erode the authority of the executive branch and interfere with the separation of powers.

Former President Trump responded to the news in a statement mocking the committee:

The Unselect Committee of Radical Left Democrats, and two failed Republicans, has just dropped a large portion of their request for my records and documents—a very big story even though the New York Times refused to put it on the front page. The reason that they dropped the records request is that they don’t want this horror show to happen to Biden and Hunter in three years. This also changes the entire complexion of their request, not that there are any documents that would be incriminating or a problem for me—but the Witch Hunt continues!

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who is on the committee, responded to Trump by arguing that the committee had not dropped any requests for “necessary” records.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.