Biden orders Trump visitor logs turned over to Jan. 6 panel
By Morgan Chalfant - 02/16/22 07:23 AM EST
President Biden is rejecting former President Trump’s claim of executive privilege over Trump-era White House visitor logs, ordering the National Archives to turn the documents over to the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
White House counsel Dana Remus sent a letter to U.S. archivist David Ferriero dated Tuesday spelling out the White House’s view and ordering the documents turned over to the committee within 15 days “unless prohibited by court order.”
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill, reiterates that the White House believes Congress “has a compelling need in service of its legislative functions” for the documents to understand circumstances leading up to “the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal Government since the Civil War.”
“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 to these records and portions of records,” Remus wrote.
Remus also noted that the White House’s current policy is to release visitor logs for transparency, a practice that was stopped under the Trump administration.
“The majority of the entries over which the former President has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under current policy,” Remus wrote.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/594469-biden-rejects-trump-executive-privilege-claim-orders-visitor-logs
