Oct. 30 (UPI) — Former President Donald Trump seeks to block 770 pages out of approximately 1600 tied to the investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and efforts to contest the November election.
John Laster, director of the National Archives’ presidential materials division, outlined the pages that Trump seeks to exclude from the investigation by asserting executive privilege in a court filing Saturday.
The filing shows that Trump has asserted executive privilege regarding hundreds of pages of documents relevant to the investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election results out of approximately 1,600 pages NARA has identified to date.
The independent agency charged with preservation and documentation of government and historical records still has to review thousands of additional pages, Laster noted in the filing.
NARA first notified Trump’s representatives in August of its intent to disclose approximately 136 pages of the records to the congressional committee conducting the investigation, with subsequent notifications about additional records in September and earlier this month.
Trump sought to assert executive privilege over 39 pages of documents in the first notification, such as daily presidential diaries, schedules, appointments showing White House visitors, activity logs, call logs, drafts, speeches and remarks related to events of Jan. 6.
He also asserted executive privilege over seven pages of non-responsive records that had been withdrawn from the notification.
In the second notification, NARA intended to disclose 742 pages of records from the former president Trump’s administration including files from his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and senior adviser Stephen Miller, among others.
Trump asserted executive privilege over 656 of those 742 pages.
The third notification included 146 pages of records transferred to NARA from the White House Office of the Executive Clerk under Trump’s administration and files of White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin.
Trump asserted executive privilege over 68 of those 146 pages of records, which includes a draft proclamation honoring the Capitol Police and deceased officers Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood, and related emails from the files of the Executive Clerk’s office. He also asserted privilege over documents from the Philbin files related to the 2020 election.
