President Biden has waived executive privilege on an initial set of documents from the Trump White House sought by the select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, his spokeswoman said Friday.
“The president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted for the first set of documents from the Trump White House that has been provided to us by the National Archives,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
The Trump legal team has sought to block some documents from the House investigators. But the Biden White House counsel’s office cited “unique and extraordinary circumstances.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers said Thursday that the former president is asserting executive privilege to block demands for testimony and documents in the probe, setting up a likely court battle.
The White House‘s decision, which is being made on a case-by-case basis, paves the way for the National Archives to share Trump White House documents with the House select committee. The move applies only to an initial batch of documents sought by the panel.
Ms. Psaki said the attack on the Capitol “was in many respects a unique attack on the foundations of our democracy.”
“The president’s dedicated to ensuring that something like that could never happen again, which is why the administration is cooperating with ongoing investigations including the Jan. 6 Select Committee to bring to light what happened,” she said.
Ms. Psaki suggested the White House likely would waive privilege again for the investigators.
“We will evaluate questions of privilege on a case-by-case basis,” she said. “But the president has also been clear that he believes it to be of the utmost importance for both Congress and the American people to have a complete understanding of the events of that day to prevent them from happening again.”
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Steve Bannon says the former White House aide won’t comply with a subpoena from the committee because Mr. Trump is asserting executive privilege.
Two other witnesses subpoenaed by the panel, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Pentagon aide Kash Patel, are “engaging” with the committee, according to its Democratic chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, and Republican vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Mr. Thompson and Ms. Cheney issued a statement Friday after a deadline for document production had passed.
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
