Who was in the White House with Donald Trump as rioters overran the U.S. Capitol on January 6th?
The House committee probing the Capitol attack will now have the benefit of White House visitor logs to help answer that question. The Biden administration authorized the release of the logs – from the National Archives to Congressional investigators – over the objections of the previous president.
The Associated Press reports:
In a letter sent Monday to the National Archives, White House counsel Dana Remus said Biden had considered Trump’s claim that because he was president at the time of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the records should remain private, but decided that it was “not in the best interest of the United States” to do so.
She also noted that as a matter of policy, the Biden administration “voluntarily discloses such visitor logs on a monthly basis,” as did the Obama administration, and that the majority of the entries over which Trump asserted the claim would be publicly released under the current policy.
Remus also wrote “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.”
Citing the “urgency” of the committee’s work, Remus said the Archives should transmit the logs within 15 days.
The New York Times adds key context:
Mr. Biden had similarly decided last year not to support Mr. Trump’s claim of executive privilege over other batches of White House documents and records sought by the committee. Mr. Trump went to federal court to block the release of those earlier batches but lost.
“It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will go to court again in an attempt to block or slow the release of the visitor logs,” The Times notes.
The outlet adds:
Committee investigators have made some progress in recent weeks putting together a better portrait of what Mr. Trump was doing inside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, and who visited with him. In doing so, they have relied in part on lower-level staff members and Trump White House documents. Mr. Trump watched the protests from the West Wing on television, and according to letters released by the committee, initially refused pleas from aides to intervene to stop the crowd.
Through testimony, the committee has learned that White House aides asked one of Mr. Trump’s daughters, Ivanka, “to intervene in an attempt to persuade President Trump to address the ongoing lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill,” according to a letter the committee sent Ms. Trump last month requesting she sit for questioning.
According to CNN, “It remains unclear how detailed the visitor logs were under the Trump administration or what the documents could reveal to the committee.”