Trump Appeals Judge's Ruling He Can't Block Jan. 6 Documents Because He's 'Not President'

President Donald Trump is appealing a judge's ruling that he can't block documents from being turned over to the Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

Trump sued the January 6 committee over claims they illegally requested White House records as part of their investigation. The former president asserted that the documents the committee requested are protected under executive privilege, a legal doctrine that protects some White House communications from becoming public.

Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled against Trump late Tuesday night, largely because he's no longer the sitting president and deference should be given to President Joe Biden's decision as to whether to assert executive privilege.

"[Trump's] position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power 'exists in perpetuity,'" Chutkan wrote. "But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President."

Chutkan noted in her ruling that Trump still has the right to assert that his records are privileged but that Biden isn't constitutionally obliged to honor that belief.

Jesse Binnall, Trump's attorney, sought for the court to do a document by document review of the materials the committee requested, but Chutkan said during a Thursday hearing she hasn't seen any statute or case that requires the court to get involved in a dispute between a former president and an incumbent president. She cited the Presidential Records Act, which gives the current president ownership over presidential records.

Chutkan noted Biden waived the executive privilege and said the current president was the person who was "best able" and in the best position to determine executive privilege. Binnall disagreed, arguing during Thursday's hearing that the "former president has rights."

While all parties agreed that this is the first time in the history of the Presidential Records Act that a dispute between a former and current president resulted in litigation, prosecutor Elizabeth Shapiro argued on Thursday it's not a "difficult or particularly novel circumstance."

Shapiro said more weight needs to be given to the incumbent president's decision to protect or release documents and noted that documents are only protected for 12 years and can be made available to the judiciary before they're made public.

"Congressional need outweighs the confidentiality in this instance and President Biden's decision that the public interest lies in the release of the documents requires deference and is imminently rational," Shapiro argued.

Binnall argued in court on Thursday that the committee's requests were "overly broad" and Congress needed to make "narrow" requests. Chutkan agreed that some requests were "unbelievably broad," and asked the defense to justify needing communications with 40 individuals from April 2020 to January 6 and documents concerning polling data and election issues.

Douglas Letter, general counsel for the House of Representatives, also agreed they are broad but said they were necessary to figure out "what the atmosphere was that brought this about."

"This attack didn't come out of nowhere. It wasn't some spontaneous thing that arose on January 6," Letter said. "We need to go back to the many attempts that were made before the election to try to build major mistrust about the election itself which undermine our democracy so if President Trump did lose he could say this was unfair and generate lots of anger in ways that led to January 6."

Chutkan agreed that broad communications after the November election could be relevant but pushed back on the assertion that documents needed to go back as far as April 2020, saying, "There has to be some limit."

Letter acknowledged that the documents going back to April 2020 may not yield any relevant information, but argued Congress needed to know when the process that led to the insurrection started and who was involved.

Democrats sought to create a commission to probe the events of the January 6 insurrection, which left five people dead. However, Republicans blocked the commission, prompting Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to create a select committee instead. With only two Pelosi-appointed Republicans on it—Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger—Republicans have criticized the committee for being a partisan effort to target the GOP.

Trump is among the leading critics of the committee, labeling it a witch hunt and a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. He also denied that the January 6 riot at the Capitol amounted to an insurrection and has said the "real insurrection" happened on November 3, 2020, the date of the presidential election.

Much of the committee's investigation has focused on Trump, who's been accused of inciting the Capitol riot with his claims that the election was stolen from him and speech on January 6. Trump pushed back and denied having any responsibility for the violence that occurred and has tried to block the investigation from obtaining potentially damning materials.

Trump's lawsuit came after the Biden administration declined to assert executive privilege over the estimated 40 documents the committee sought. The lawsuit alleged Biden refused to protect the documents in a "political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies."

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Cheney, who is serving as vice chair, said Trump was attempting to stop the committee from "getting to the facts" about what happened on January 6 and accused him of attempting to delay and obstruct the probe.

The White House has stood by its decision not to protect the documents, saying in a statement that Trump "abused the office of the presidency and attempted to subvert a peaceful transfer of power."

"The former president's actions represented a unique—and existential—threat to our democracy that can't be swept under the rug. As President Biden determined, the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself," White House spokesman Mike Gwin said.

The National Archives is set to start turning over records to the House on November 12 unless Trump gets a court order blocking the release of the documents. Chutkan agreed to expedite the case because of the looming deadline for the release of the documents.