WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) — Former President Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit against the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a court document obtained by NewsNation.
The lawsuit aims to block the release of documents requested by the committee, challenging the decision of President Joe Biden to release them.
Trump claims in the lawsuit that the request “is almost limitless in scope,” and seeks records with no reasonable connection to that day.
“In a political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies, President Biden has refused to assert executive privilege over numerous clearly privileged documents requested by the Committee,” Trump says, according to the court papers.
The Jan. 6 committee is seeking the documents as part of its investigation into how a group of Trump supporters was able to storm the Capitol building Jan. 6 in an effort to halt the certification of Biden’s win.
In a joint statement late Monday, Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the panel’s vice chairwoman, said they would fight the lawsuit, which they said is “nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct” the investigation.
“There’s a long history of the White House accommodating congressional investigative requests when the public interest outweighs other concerns,” Thompson and Cheney said. “It’s hard to imagine a more compelling public interest than trying to get answers about an attack on our democracy and an attempt to overturn the results of an election.”
On Tuesday, the committee will vote on a criminal contempt referral for former Trump staffer Steve Bannon for failure to help in its investigation.
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