WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has instructed the National Archives to give White House visitor logs to the House Jan. 6 Select Committee, again rejecting his predecessor’s claims of executive privilege over documents that might shed light on last year’s insurrection attempt.
In a letter to the National Archives, White House counsel Dana Remus said Biden had rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims that the visitor logs, which include who visited the White House Jan. 6, 2021, were subject to executive privilege and that “in light of the urgency” of the committee’s work, the agency should provide the material to the committee within 15 days.
Trump sued in October to block the release of other White House documents when Biden made a similar decision not to uphold his executive privilege claims. The Supreme Court in January ordered the documents be handed over to the committee, agreeing with two lower courts that the former president’s claim of executive privilege could not outweigh the views of the current president, who supported the release.
