A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked the release of White House records sought by a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, after a request from former President Donald Trump.
The administrative injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit effectively forbids until the end of this month the release of records that were to be turned over Friday. The appeals court set oral arguments in the case for Nov. 30.
The order was issued by Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents. Courts often issue such injunctions to allow more time to consider the underlying issues. The order was not a ruling on whether Trump or the House committee has a stronger legal argument.
“The purpose of this administrative injunction is to protect the court’s jurisdiction to address appellant’s claims of executive privilege and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits,” the judges wrote Thursday.
White House counsel Dana Remus told the National Archives in a letter obtained by NBC News that the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 was “the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal government since the Civil War” and that Trump’s efforts to keep Congress in the dark about what happened “is not in the best interests of the United States.”
“Accordingly, President Biden does not uphold the former President’s assertion of privilege,” Remus wrote. The House committee and the National Archives did not oppose Trump’s request to the appeals court.
