Biden Rejects Trump’s Claim To Executive Privilege On White House Visitor Logs

President Joe Biden rejected former President Donald Trump‘s claims of executive privilege and ordered the Trump administration’s visitor logs to be turned over to the House select committee probing last year’s Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

“The President has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to these records and portions of records,” wrote White House Counsel Dana Remus to U.S. archivist David Ferriero in a Tuesday letter.

The committee sought the visitor logs to understand who went in and out of the White House the day of the riot. In the letter, Remus noted that the Biden and Obama administrations volunteered information from visitor logs at the end of each month, and Trump’s documents would have been released if his administration had abided by the same policy.

Last month, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to withhold other documents from the Trump administration under executive privilege as a former President. The court upheld a lower court’s ruling that his claims to executive privilege would have failed even if he were currently in office. As the current President, Biden has waived Trump’s executive privilege on nearly all documents and has voiced that he will continue to do so unless the documents contain information that is absolutely necessary to protect.

The committee has been able to obtain White House call logs from Jan. 6, but none of the logs have listed calls made by Trump. They are looking for any record that might give insight into the former President’s thoughts and actions leading up to, during and after the Capitol attack. They have also requested to speak with people linked to Trump.

Article by Rose Carter