NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW: Pelosi praises Supreme Court for nixing Trump’s executive privilege lawsuit
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) praised the Supreme Court’s decision today to put a final stake in the heart of Donald Trump’s efforts to prevent his White House records from facing the scrutiny of the House Select Committee on January 6th.
The court formally rejected the appeal from Trump and his attorneys to block the release of the records, just days after the court refused to issue a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the implementation of a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that decided that the disgraced former president had no legal basis for opposing President Biden’s decision to allow the January 6th committee access to the documents.
While today’s rejection of the appeal cemented the outcome of the lower court ruling, it was somewhat anti-climactic given that the committee has already begun accepting delivery of the documents from the National Archives after the preliminary injunction was denied.
In a statement that vowed that the House Select Committee would uncover the truth behind the events leading to the violent incursion of the Capitol last year, Pelosi was adamant that justice would be served.
“Today, the Supreme Court made resoundingly clear that no one is above the law – not even a former president who incited a deadly insurrection,” Pelosi declared in her statement.
“By again rejecting the former president’s attempts to hide documents related to January 6th, the Court’s decision is a victory for the truth, for the rule of law and for the American people,” she continued. “Reviewing these documents is essential to gaining a full picture of the events leading up to, during and after the January 6th attack on our Democracy.”
“Now that the Court has ended the former president’s unlawful and dangerous campaign to hide the truth from the American people,” concluded Speaker Pelosi, “the House’s Select Committee to Investigate January 6th will continue its laser focus on finding the truth of that dark day and ensuring it never happens again.”
As congressional staffers begin to pour through the boxes of presidential documents — some of which were reportedly taped together by White House staffers after Donald Trump routinely and methodically tore them into little pieces and tossed them in the trash in apparent violation of government document retention laws — they expect to find the information they need to understand the role Trump may have played in inspiring the violence that unfolded in Washington D.C. over a year ago.
Whether they find an obvious “smoking gun” remains to be seen, but many observers find it difficult to believe that Trump would have waged such a strident and expensive legal battle to prevent access to documents that would exonerate him of any blame in the investigation.
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Original reporting by Bob Brigham at RawStory.
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