President Joe Biden has rejected another effort by former President Donald Trump to keep official White House documents out of the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol.
White House counsel Dana Remus said in a letter to the National Archives on Tuesday that White House visitor logs should be turned over to the House Jan. 6 committee within the next two weeks. The logs show people who visited the White House when Trump was in office.
The committee had been seeking the visitor logs, but Trump fought their release on claims of executive privilege.
“The president 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 these records and portions of records,” Remus wrote in the letter, according to The New York Times.
“Constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.”
Remus said that the National Archives, which is the repository for all official presidential records, should turn over the visitor logs to the committee within 15 days.
Remus sent the letter to the National Archives on Tuesday and said she would notify Trump’s attorneys on Wednesday.
The House committee investigating the Capitol attack has been seeking the visitor logs to get an idea of Trump’s associations in the days and weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault by radical Trump supporters who sought to block Biden’s official certification as president-elect.
Last year, Biden rejected a similar claim of executive privilege for other documents sought by committee investigators. Trump unsuccessfully tried to block their release in court. The former president could also go to court to try and block the release of the visitor logs.
