Trump hammers Capital riot lawsuit opponents | US | News
President Donald Trump invoked executive privilege to block courtroom opponents from accessing evidence in an ongoing case alleging he incited violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
The five-year-old lawsuit filed by police officers injured trying to repel the violent mob that day alleges that Trump’s impassioned speech to his supporters sparked the riot that nearly overturned the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden and injured 140 officers.
In October it was revealed that the BBC had doctored footage of the speech, causing uproar and accusations. The heavily edited speech was portrayed as Trump inciting the rioters when it was broadcast to audiences at the time.
In recent months, Trump pardoned and dismissed criminal cases against more than 1,500 people charged for their roles in the events of January 6. He also issued a sweeping pardon last month for prominent allies who face legal scrutiny for their involvement in the effort, alleging that the FBI deliberately triggered the Capitol chaos.
It’s unclear what records Trump wants to keep
While the specific records Trump intended to withhold from plaintiffs remain unclear, according to Politico, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson confirmed that the president chose to oppose the disclosure of some materials subpoenaed from the National Archives and Records Administration last year.
“The president asserted administrative privilege over discovery requests in this case because the overly broad requests required documents that were either presidential cables or correspondence between the president’s staff and were clearly constitutionally protected from discovery,” Jackson said.
Delays in accessing White House records
Lawyers for the officers expressed frustration over lengthy delays in accessing White House records from Trump’s first term that are now held at the National Archives. Politico notes that although the Biden White House routinely waived executive privilege to support investigators’ requests for Trump’s records, Biden did not respond to a request about the case before he left office in January 2025.
Trump initially fought Congressional efforts to access his records and took the fight to the Supreme Court, which upheld a lower court decision allowing the Archives to release the records. But a sitting president’s view of executive privilege carries far more weight than a former president’s.
Justice Department confirms Trump’s privilege claim
At a hearing before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Wednesday, Justice Department attorney Alexander Haas confirmed that Trump had opposed some of the plaintiffs’ requests but did not elaborate on the volume of records or whether a log of the records had been prepared. Haas promised to submit these details to the court in a report next week.
The year-long subpoena seeks records related to the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, documents related to efforts to get Trump to condemn the violence, records regarding the potential for violence that day, communications regarding alleged election fraud and voter certification, and any strategies to overturn the November 2020 election results.
Trump’s defense and BBC controversy
In response to the lawsuits, Trump argued that he was immune from liability because he spoke and acted in his official capacity as president on January 6. His lawyers also argued that the Ellipse statements were protected by the First Amendment and could not result in liability.
Discussion of Trump’s actions on January 6 was also covered in the media; The BBC has faced criticism for allegedly doctoring footage of Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. The Express reported that the BBC selectively edited the speech to eliminate Trump’s call for peaceful protest, fueling accusations of bias and misrepresentation, that Trump threatened to sue for $1 billion and that the BBC apologized for its “error of judgement” and that the company’s chief executive Tim Davie later resigned without accepting legal liability.
As Trump continues to fight the release of the recordings and reshape the narrative around Jan. 6, the BBC controversy underscores the ongoing tensions and conflicting perspectives surrounding one of the most tumultuous periods in recent American history.
