Biden orders National Archives to give Trump logs to Jan. 6 committee

According to a letter written to the National Archives, President Joe Biden has ordered former President Donald Trump’s White House visitor logs be handed over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. The letter, sent Tuesday and released publicly Wednesday, once again rejects former President Trump’s claims of executive privilege over the logs.

“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,” White House counsel Dana Remus wrote in the letter. “As a matter of policy, and subject to limited exceptions, the Biden Administration voluntarily discloses such visitor logs on a monthly basis. The Obama Administration followed the same practice. The majority of the entries over which the former President has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under current policy.”

Biden’s ordering of the National Archives to hand over the Trump logs is the latest in a months-long battle over executive privilege regarding Jan. 6 documents. Trump tried but failed to get the Supreme Court to block the entirety of the committee’s request for documents. However, back in December the committee said it would defer its request for some of the Trump administration documents the committee had previously requested.

Executive privilege has also been used by a variety of Trump officials, including former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, to avoid having to comply with committee subpoenas. The House has sent contempt charges for both Meadows and Bannon to the Justice Department. Bannon was later indicted.

Not only is the committee looking into who was allowed in the White House on Jan. 6. It also wants to know who the former president spoke with on the phone that day. Last week, the New York Times reported there are gaps in the White House telephone logs from that day. The committee recently learned Trump spoke to Vice President Mike Pence the day of the riot, but that call did not show up on the log.