Washington [US]: The US District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit denied former President Donald Trump’s bid to prevent the release of White House records from his administration to the US House Select Committee leading a probe into the events at the Capitol on January 6, a court ruling said. “On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents… For those reasons, we affirm the district court’s judgment denying a preliminary injunction as to those documents in the Archivist’s first three tranches over which President Biden has determined that a claim of executive privilege is not justified,” the ruling said on Thursday. The central question in the case was whether a US federal court can, at Trump’s behest, override Biden’s decision to release to the congressional committee documents that he deems to be needed for a critical legislative inquiry, the ruling said. The Select Committee will decide next week whether to file contempt charges against former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who filed charges against US Speaker Pelosi and all nine members of the panel. Meadows asked the court to invalidate the subpoena that the Select Committee had issued to him and Verizon, the cellular operator for his prior personal phone records. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is similarly fighting what he called the Select Committee’s overreach, prompting them to bring contempt charges against him for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoenas.
