Jan. 6 House committee agrees to shield some records

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published 29 December 2021

At the request of the Biden White House, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has agreed to shield some documents from the Trump administration.

Former President Donald Trump has been trying to block the committee from getting records from his time in office, including handwritten notes, speech drafts, visitor logs, presidential diaries, and "a draft executive order on the topic of election integrity," The Associated Press reports. Trump, who is claiming executive privilege, is bringing his case to the Supreme Court.

President Biden does not believe that the documents can all be kept private due to executive privilege, but an agreement was reached with the House committee not to release some records, as they could compromise national security. Most of these documents do not have anything directly to do with the events of Jan. 6, AP reports, but were part of the committee's broad request for records from the Trump White House.

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Tim Mulvey, a spokesman for the committee, said that the panel "has agreed to defer action on certain records as part of the accommodations process, as was the case with an earlier tranche of records. The select committee has not withdrawn its request for these records and will continue to engage with the executive branch to ensure the committee gets access to all the information relevant to our probe."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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