OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Joe Biden is not prepared to lift a finger to help Donald Trump by honoring his request to keep certain documents away from the January 6 select committee investigating the incident.
White House Press Secretary Jen Osaki confirmed that the Biden administration is cooperating with the select committee.
“Can you confirm that the White House is authorizing the National Archives to turn over documents covering all communications related to Trump’s activities on January 6th?” a reporter asked her on Friday.
“The administration takes the events of January 6th incredibly seriously, as the President said on its six-month anniversary. That day posed an ext- — existential crisis and a test of whether our democracy could survive. It was, in many respects, a unique attack on the foundations of our democracy,” the press secretary said.
“The President is dedicated to ensuring that something like that could never happen again, which is why the administration is cooperating with ongoing investigations, including the January 6th Select Committee to bring to light what happened.
“As a part of this process, 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 have been provided to us by the National Archives,” she said.
“As we’ve said previously, this will be an ongoing process, and this is just the first set of documents. And we will evaluate questions of privilege on a case-by-case basis.
“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,” she said.
Trump said on Friday that he had requested executive privilege by used to protect these documents.
“I write concerning requests for documents and records sent to your office on March 25, 2021 and August 25, 2021 by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” he said in a letter to Archivist of the United States David Ferriero. “The Committee requested an extremely broad set of documents and records, potentially numbering in the millions, which unquestionably contain information protected from disclosure by the executive and other privileges, including but not limited to the presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.”
The 4th President of the United States issued two press releases on Friday on the matter.
“I have sent a letter to the [US] National Archives and Records Administration in defense of the Office of the Presidency, the Constitution, vital principles of separation of powers, and on behalf of our great Nation. The Radical Left Democrats tried the Russia Witch Hunt, they tried the fake impeachments, and now they are trying once again to use Congress to persecute their political opponents. Their requests are not based in law or reality – it’s just a game to these politicians. They don’t care about our Country or the American people,” he said in the first.
But after word came back that Biden said, in his own letter to the National Archives penned by White House Counsel Dana Remus that “President Biden 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 any of the documents,” Trump had more to say.
“Biden has rejected our request to withhold White House information from the House Unselect Committee investigating the January 6th protest, but has not taken a stance on the insurrection that took place on November 3rd, often referred to as the Crime of the Century. This will put the current White House in a terrible position when the inevitable request for information comes concerning the massive corruption by Hunter Biden and the already well-documented crimes committed by the Biden family, the least of which are Hunter’s paintings selling for as much as $500,000 a piece. With our Country collapsing, with our Military disgraced, with our Borders nonexistent, when will the American people have had enough?” he said.
