A judge wasted no time in swatting down an emergency request from Donald Trump to block the National Archives from sending over sensitive documents to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The twice-impeached one-term president filed the emergency request late Monday night, and Judge Tanya Chutkan responded just after midnight and gave Trump’s attorneys a brief lesson in basic courtroom procedures.
“Federal Rule of Civil Procedure allows temporary injunctive relief “[w]hile an appeal is pending from an interlocutory order of final judgment,'” the judge responded. “This court has not yet entered any such interlocutory order of final judgment and thus a request for relief under Rule 62(d), which plainly requires an interlocutory order of final judgment before considering such motions, is premature.”
Trump’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, had asked Chutkan to approve the “administrative stay” of her own ruling before she issued it so the former president could appeal the decision before the Archives started turning over documents, and he also warned the judge that he would ask an appeals court to step in if she didn’t rule by Wednesday.