It’s official: The White House counsel has just officially and formally blocked Donald Trump from being granted the ability to invoke executive privilege. Trump and his former officials will have no legal means to avoid responding to requests for depositions, testimony, or documents.
President Joe Biden “has waived executive privilege” on the initial set of documents produced at the request of the January 6 Select Committee, NBC News’ Mike Memoli reports.
The Trump legal team had “sought to block some” of the documents, but Biden White House counsel Dana Remus says a in a scathing letter to the National Archives, obtained by NBC: “These are unique and extraordinary circumstances.”
“President Biden has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified as to any of the documents,” Remus added, NBC News reports.
“Congress is examining an assault on our Constitution and democratic institutions provoked and fanned by those sworn to protect them, and the conduct under investigation extends far beyond typical deliberations concerning the proper discharge of the President’s constitutional responsibilities. The 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,” Remus says in the letter.