Fresh blow for Trump as judge says she won’t let him use legal delays to hide papers from Capitol riot committee

Judge Tanya Chutkan shot down a request to keep her ruling allowing the National Archives to give Congress Trump administration documents from going into effect

Jacob Chansley, aka the “QAnon shaman”, at the Capitol riot (EPA-EFE)

The District of Columbia federal judge who on Tuesday denied former president Donald Trump’s request to block the National Archives from turning records from his administration over to the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection has rejected a request to keep her ruling from taking effect while he appeals it.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Wednesday ruled that Mr Trump’s attorneys had not made a convincing case that he would be successful in his bid to have the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia block her earlier order because they have not shown that legitimate executive branch interests would be harmed by allowing the Select Committee to Investigate the 6 January attack on the Capitol to review numerous presidential records created during and in the days leading to the worst attack on the Capitol since the 1814 Burning of Washington.

Judge Chutkan also wrote that the proper purpose of the emergency relief Mr Trump had sought would have been to “preserve the status quo” – which in this case, would be the Archives following previously-announced plans to begin turning documents over to the committee on 12 November, and that his request amounted to asking her to overrule the judgement she’d issued just one day prior.

“Plaintiff, as is his right, has sought review of this court’s denial of his Motion for a Preliminary Injunction. And the court is aware that the timeline for appellate review of that decision will be accelerated,” she wrote. “But nothing in the court’s November 9, 2021, Order, or this Order, triggers the harm he alleges because the Archivist will not submit the requested records to the Select Committee until November 12, 2021, and Plaintiff can seek appellate relief in the interim. This court will not effectively ignore its own reasoning in denying injunctive relief in the first place to grant injunctive relief now”.

While Mr Trump has filed an appeal with the DC Circuit, it’s not clear whether the court will make any ruling before the archives begin handing over the documents to the committee.

According to court records, the court’s clerk has set a deadline for the first motions to be filed in the case by 10 December, long after that document transfer process would have started.