President Donald Trump has rejected Joe Biden’s attempt to invoke executive privilege over documents the Senate is seeking as part of multiple investigations into Biden’s controversial presidency. Trump concluded that shielding the records “is not in the best interests of the United States,” clearing the way for the documents to be turned over to lawmakers conducting the investigations.
On Monday, White House counsel David Warrington sent a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) directing it to hand over the disputed records to Congress — and the justification Trump’s team offered was as pointed as it was deliberate.
“The abuse of the autopen that took place during the Biden Presidency, and the extraordinary efforts to shield President Biden’s diminished faculties from the public, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again,” Warrington wrote.
The fight traces back to December 10, when NARA notified the White House that Biden had asserted executive privilege over materials sought in four separate Senate probes. Biden had formally invoked that protection in two letters to NARA dated October 22 and December 3. Warrington’s response was blunt: the assertion “is not justified.”
The documents at issue are connected to three different investigations.
The first involves a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations request for records, the White House letter characterized as related to the “coverup of former President Biden’s health and cognitive decline.” The second covers two Senate Judiciary Committee requests focused on what Republicans describe as coordinated efforts by the Biden administration to weaponize the federal government against Trump and his allies through politically motivated prosecutions. The third centers on the Biden Crime Family, Biden’s use of private email accounts, his role in Ukraine policy as vice president, and Hunter Biden’s seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Any one of these investigations is bound to uncover some seriously damaging information, and the Trump White House is determined to find the evidence. “The constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield from Congress evidence of a President’s efforts to imprison his opponent,” the White House argued.
Recommended: This Is the Worst News Democrats Could Possibly Get
While many on the left are sure to bring up the Supreme Court decision on executive privilege, the Trump administration has consistently asserted that privilege exists to protect the integrity of presidential decision-making, not to bury evidence of alleged political warfare against a rival. Warrington himself said he was “unaware of a Supreme Court ruling or constitutional text that extends those protections to former President Biden’s efforts to assist his son’s shady business deals.”
And the best part? Biden himself set the precedent for this.
Only a sitting president can assert executive privilege, and in 2021, Biden denied Trump’s request to assert executive privilege over White House documents, thus allowing the partisan J6 Committee to use them for their bogus investigation. Trump sued to stop the disclosure, arguing that the committee had no legitimate need for many of the documents, which he said were unrelated to the Capitol riot.
Then, in May 2022, Acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall informed Trump’s attorneys that the Biden White House Counsel’s Office had formally requested NARA grant the FBI access to 15 boxes of Trump documents at Mar-a-Lago. According to Just the News reporter John Solomon, the same letter indicated Biden had authorized NARA to waive any executive privilege claims Trump might raise to block DOJ access. In other words, the former president who is now asserting expansive privilege protections is the same one who, while in office, helped engineer the unraveling of Trump’s privilege claims to fuel a bogus criminal investigation.
As I wrote in February 2022, Joe Biden’s decision on Trump’s White House documents “opens himself up to the risk that Trump and a Republican majority will launch a slew of investigations, during which Biden’s White House documents will be an open book, thanks to the precedent he set by not asserting executive privilege over his predecessor’s White House communications. And he’ll deserve everything that comes from it.”
Want to support fearless journalism that exposes the Left and tells the stories the media won’t? PJ Media delivers the truth and holds the powerful accountable. Become a VIP member today—your support fuels our mission and unlocks exclusive content, podcasts, an ad-free experience, and more.
Use code FIGHT for 60% off. It’s a great time to join our movement. Join now and stand for America-first journalism!
