Trump moves to keep hundreds of pages of call logs and other records secret from Jan 6 investigators

A court filing from the National Archives offers a first glimpse at the documents Donald Trump is seeking to stop from being released

Former President Donald Trump is trying to block documents including call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from his chief of staff relating to the 6 January riot from being released, the National Archives revealed in a court filing early Saturday.

Mr Trump is suing to prevent the National Archives from providing those documents, and thousands more, to the House select committee investigating the attack.

President Joe Biden has refused Mr Trump’s request to assert executive privilege on most of the records after determining that doing so is “not in the best interests of the United States”.

The Associated Press reported the court filing details the National Archive’s efforts to identify records from the Trump White House in response to a broad, 13-page request from the House committee for documents pertaining to the insurrection and Mr Trump’s efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

The document offers the first look at the sort of records that could soon be turned over to the committee for its investigation.

Billy Laster, the director of the National Archives’ White House Liaison Division, wrote that among the documents Mr Trump has sought to block are 30 pages of “daily presidential diaries, schedules, appointment information showing visitors to the White House, activity logs, call logs, and switchboard shift-change checklists showing calls to the President and Vice President, all specifically for or encompassing January 6, 2021”.

Mr Trump also wants 13 pages of “drafts of speeches, remarks, and correspondence concerning the events of January 6, 2021”, and “three handwritten notes concerning the events of January 6 from [former White House chief of staff Mark] Meadows’ files” blocked from release.

Mr Trump also tried to exert executive privilege over pages from former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s binders of talking points and statements “principally relating to allegations of voter fraud, election security, and other topics concerning the 2020 election”.

Rioters storm the US Capitol on 6 January (The Associated Press)

Other documents included a handwritten note from Mr Meadows’ files “listing potential or scheduled briefings and telephone calls concerning the January 6 certification and other election issues” and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity”.

Mr Laster’s declaration notes that the National Archives’ search began with paper documents because it took until August for digital records from the Trump White House to be transferred to the agency.

The National Archives, he wrote, has identified “several hundred thousand potentially responsive records” of emails from the Trump White House out of about 100 million sent or received during his administration, and was working to determine whether they pertained to the House request.

Mr Biden has so far waived executive privilege on nearly all the documents that the committee has asked for, though the committee agreed to “defer” its requests for several dozen pages of records at the behest of the Biden White House.

The House committee is investigating the 6 January insurrection when an armed mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the certification of Mr Biden’s election victory.

Mr Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House on a charge he incited the riot but was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.

The Associated Press contributed to this story