New January 6 court filings reveal what Trump is trying to keep

The court filings are in response to a lawsuit Trump brought nearly two weeks ago in which he is attempting to block congressional investigators from accessing hundreds of pages of records they requested from the National Archives, which inherited Trump’s presidential papers. The House presents itself as in agreement with the Biden administration, in an unusual show of inter-branch alignment, to oppose Trump.

“In 2021, for the first time since the Civil War, the Nation did not experience a peaceful transfer of power,” the House Committee wrote. “The Select Committee has reasonably concluded that it needs the documents of the then-President who helped foment the breakdown in the rule of law. … It is difficult to imagine a more critical subject for Congressional investigation.”

Trump’s court case is a crucial and potentially historic legal fight over the authority of a former president to protect his term in office, the House’s subpoena power and the reach of executive privilege.

The secret records

Trump is trying to keep secret from the House more than 700 pages from the files of his closest advisers up to and on January 6, according to a sworn declaration from the National Archives’ B. John Laster, which the Biden administration submitted to the DC District Court on Saturday.

Those records include working papers from then-White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the press secretary and a White House lawyer who had notes and memos about Trump’s efforts to undermine the election.

In the Meadows documents alone, there are three handwritten notes about the events of January 6 and two pages listing briefings and telephone calls about the Electoral College certification, the archivist said.

Laster’s outline of the documents offers the first glimpse into the paperwork that would reveal goings-on inside the West Wing as Trump supporters gathered in Washington and then overran the US Capitol, disrupting the certification of the 2020 vote.

Trump is also seeking to keep secret 30 pages of his daily schedule, White House visitor logs and call records, Laster wrote. The call logs, schedules and switchboard checklists document “calls to the President and Vice President, all specifically for or encompassing January 6, 2021,” Laster said.

Those types of records could answer some of the most closely guarded facts of what happened between Trump and other high-level officials, including those under siege on Capitol Hill on January 6.

The records Trump wants to keep secret also include draft speeches, a draft proclamation honoring two police officers who died in the siege and memos and other documents…