Trump lawyers say ‘no evidence of wrongdoing’ to support Jan. 6 committee records demands

Lawyers for former President Trump told a federal court on Tuesday that there is “no evidence of wrongdoing” from his White House that would justify the Jan. 6 select committee’s exhaustive records request of executive branch documents.

Trump’s legal team submitted a court filing ahead of a Thursday hearing in his lawsuit against the committee and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) seeking to block the lawmakers from obtaining records from his administration with assertions of executive privilege.

“The Committee’s breathless innuendo and conjecture cannot sustain the broad scope of their request when there is no evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump and those in the White House,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

The former president is arguing that the Jan. 6 committee’s requests for documents as part of its investigation are overly broad and lack a legitimate legislative purpose to justify overriding Trump’s executive privilege.

Trump filed his lawsuit last month, asking a federal judge for a preliminary injunction prohibiting NARA from complying with the records requests. President Biden had ordered NARA to hand over the records to the committee, refusing Trump’s assertions of executive privilege.

The committee filed its response to Trump’s lawsuit late Friday night, defending its investigative authority and calling the former president’s executive privilege claims “unprecedented and deeply flawed.”

“The Select Committee’s request is squarely within its jurisdiction and driven by a clear legislative purpose: to understand the facts and causes surrounding the January 6 attack to develop legislation and other measures that will protect our Nation from a similar assault in the future,” the committee’s lawyers said in a court filing. “The Select Committee has reasonably concluded that it needs the documents of the then-President who helped foment the breakdown in the rule of law.”

The parties will make their case to a federal judge at 11 a.m. on Thursday.