US appeals court rejects Trump bid to withhold Jan 6 riot records
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A United States appeals court has rejected an attempt by former President Donald Trump to hold back the release of White House records linked to the deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
A three-judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC said on Thursday that Trump had provided “no basis” for his request.
“Both branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committee’s inquiry into an attack on the legislative branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power,” the judges wrote in their decision.
“The Committee is investigating a singular event in this nation’s history, in which there is a sufficient factual predicate for inferring that former President Trump and his advisors played a materially relevant role.”
The former Republican president had tried to exert “executive privilege” to block the release of the documents to a US House of Representatives committee investigating the Capitol riot.
But Joe Biden’s administration in October rejected that argument, prompting Trump to file a legal challenge.
On January 6, a mob of Trump supporters overran the seat of the US legislature as Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s election victory.
Trump, who delivered an incendiary speech just before the riot and had for weeks repeated false claims that the presidential election was stolen from him, was later impeached for “incitement of insurrection”.
The appeals court on Thursday gave Trump 14 days to file an emergency request to the Supreme Court to appeal its ruling.
The decision comes a day after Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, sued the House committee investigating the riot, as well as Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after the panel said it would recommend moving forward with contempt charges against him.
Meadows’s lawyer said this week that his client would stop cooperating with the committee.
George Terwilliger said in a letter on Tuesday that a deposition would be “untenable” for Meadows and that the congressional panel “ has no intention of respecting boundaries” concerning questions that Trump has claimed are off-limits due to “executive privilege”.
Meadows is seen as a key witness to Trump’s role in efforts to stop the January 6 certification of Biden’s election win.
The committee said on Thursday that it was moving towards holding Meadows in contempt of Congress.
The panel said it would hold a business meeting on Monday to vote on a report recommending the full House cite Meadows for contempt of Congress and refer him for federal prosecution.
Another longtime former Trump adviser, Steve Bannon, will also face criminal charges on July 18 for his refusal to appear in the congressional inquiry, a judge said earlier this week.
Bannon was indicted on one contempt count for refusing to appear for a deposition before the committee and a second count for refusing to produce documents.
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All of this will end up in SCOTUS and the only question is will Donald's dream team of 'lawyers' morph into some vague level of competence.
Incompetence would be a better term - ya think?
From the conclusion of the opinion:
"What Mr. Trump seeks is to have an Article III court intervene and nullify those judgments of the President and Congress, delay the Committee's work, and derail the negotiations and accommodations that the Political Branches have made. But essential to the rule of law is the principle that a former President must meet the same legal standards for obtaining preliminary injunctive relief as everyone else. And former President Trump has failed that task.
Benjamin Franklin said, at the founding, that we have "[a] Republic"—"if [we] can keep it." The events of January 6th exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted. In response, the President of the United States and Congress have each made the judgment that access to this subset of presidential communication records is necessary to address a matter of great constitutional moment for the Republic. Former President Trump has given this court no legal reason to cast aside President Biden's assessment of the Executive Branch interests at stake, or to create a separation of powers conflict that the Political Branches have avoided."
Trump seems to believe, as Nixon so famously said, "If the President does it, it isn't illegal."
Another loss by the loser.
The opinions by the trial court and appellate court in this matter are outstanding. Very strong opinions. The Supreme Court should not even take this case up.
Perhaps they SHOULDN'T, but the SCOTUS is a court where one of its judges, because of her well known writings proving her specific views on abortion, should have recused herself from ANY case concerning abortion but she DIDN'T, so in a matter concerning Trump before a court that is weighted in favour of conservative views 6 to 3 including 3 Trump appointees I cannot believe that they WOULDN'T hear the case, with, IMO, a good chance that they would find for their benefactor.
Not surprising how the phonier than thou small c christian Barrett changed her stance.
Did you really believe she would recuse herself? I loved the way she would just smile and tell the Senate what she thought they wanted to hear. Didn't Christianity used to have a minor law (?) about bearing false witness? And didn't they also have some little policy about not lying? How can anyone be expected to take Christians seriously when you people lie and cheat all time, it's VERY Christ-like. (/s) JMHO
Just wait till you see the article about her that I'm going to post in a little while. Originally I thought she was a good choice for the SCOTUS, but now I realize how wrong I was.
What a surprise, Trump attempts a legal maneuver without grounds to do so.
Yes, kind of a big deal when the sitting PotUS works his supporters into a frenzy by lying to them, daily and consistently, about a rigged system and telling them their votes have been disenfranchised and that he is the legitimate reelected PotUS and that only they can stop this steal from happening.
Check out my seed here - about how a poll worker was threatened by Kanye West's publicist.
WTF??????????????????????????????