Rejecting former US president Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege, incumbent President Joe Biden has ordered that his predecessor’s visitor logs from January 6, 2021 – the day of the Capitol Hill riots – be released.
According to the DW, White House counsel Dana Remus said in a letter to the National Archives in the US that President Biden had concluded that keeping the visitor logs private was “not in the best interest of the United States”. Remus noted that the current president has been and former Barrack Obama used to disclose their visitor logs monthly on their own volition.
Remus furthered that Trump calling for executive privilege would have covered visitor logs that the Biden regime would typically publicise.
Investigators who have been probing the Capitol Hill riots have been seeking information to articulate the day that Trump’s supported stormed the Capitol Hill building, resulting in a restless transfer of power between the Trump and Biden administrations.
The January 6 committee has been trying to find out details about the financing and organisation of the rally that Trump and his family were a part of on the Ellipse in which he told his followers to “fight like hell”. Investigators have been keen to uncover the possible connection between the rally’s organisation and the White House under Trump.
Trump had earlier taken 15 boxes that National Archives was after when he left the office for his abode to Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The January 6 committee has now sought information about the contents of the boxes. The information currently available with the committee does not account for the telephonic correspondence that Trump was a part of on January 6 last year.
Under the Presidential Records Act, it is imperative that the sitting president’s records and those of his staff at the White House be recorded in the National Archives. The outgoing administration has historically had the onus of furbishing the information to the National Archives and Trump has failed to hold back information with the Supreme Court having ruled against his efforts to do so.
This time, the Biden administration has taken a stand, with the president saying he won’t invoke executive privilege to conceal the records until it was necessary to do so.
Trump meanwhile had continued to reject the 2020 election’s outcome that ousted him from the presidential seat. He had hinted that he would run for 2024 elections but no confirmation has surfaced so far.
