Supreme Court denies Trump bid to review Jan 6 documents

Former president had filed a lawsuit against the select committee’s chairman Rep Bennie Thompson

The Supreme Court has denied a request by former president Donald Trump to review his White House records related to the Capitol insurrection on 6 January of last year.

The court made the announcement on Tuesday in a list of orders on pending cases. Mr Trump had requested a writ of writ of certiorari in a case against Rep Bennie Thompson, who serves as chairman of the House select committee investigating the riot.

“The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied,” the court wrote.

The motion was largely expected despite the fact that Mr Trump had appointed three justices – Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – with conservative Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts rounding out the majority on the court.

The former president had requested a writ of certiorari for the court to review a judgment for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In December, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a district court decision that denied a request from Mr Trump to enjoin the National Archives and Records Administration from turning over his presidential records.

But at the time, House of Representatives Counsel Doug Letter and his colleagues told the Supreme Court urged the court to deny Mr Trump’s request.

“Although the facts are unprecedented, this case is not a difficult one,” they said at the time.

“Petitioner attempts to overturn the current President’s reasonable determination that the Select Committee is entitled to three tranches of Presidential records responsive to its request. The court of appeals correctly applied this Court’s precedents to reject Petitioner’s challenge under every heightened standard he claimed should apply, relying in part on the fact that Petitioner did not make any particularized objections to production of the specific Presidential records before the court.”