MSNBC host Rachel Maddow says the “most interesting” documents sought by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot relate to election security.
In a segment on her show Monday, Maddow said two small parts of a federal court filing filed last week, in which the National Archives outlined documents former President Donald Trump is trying to keep from congressional investigators, appear to have never been revealed to the public before now.
She quoted a portion that said Trump asserts executive privilege over “a document containing presidential findings concerning the security of the 2020 election and ordering various actions.”
“Sorry?” Maddow remarked. “What were these presidential findings about the security of the election? And what actions was Trump prepared to order on the basis of those presidential findings? Did he try that? What were his findings? Did he try to order something in response to him finding something out about the election security in 2020? What?”
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In another part of the filing, Maddow cited a “draft executive order concerning election integrity” that is being sought by the House select committee.
“Trump drafted an executive order about election integrity in 2020? Again, it seems like something that would be important for the Jan. 6 investigation to have if we are going to understand the full scope of what former President Trump and his advisers were planning or attempting in terms of overturning the election,” Maddow said.
“We are going to need to know what kind of executive order concerning election integrity the White House had drafted, let alone his presidential findings and actions in response to them, that he had apparently written up and now wants to be kept secret,” she added. “As far as I know, we’ve never known about either of these things before. I’m very interested to find out what they are.”
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Trump claimed executive privilege over the documents, although President Joe Biden has rejected these requests, and the former president sued to block their release.
Trump did mention a couple of times the prospect of an executive order related to the 2020 election in the run-up to the contest. In September 2020, for instance, Trump said at a rally, “Maybe I’ll sign an executive order that you cannot have him as your president,” referring to Biden, whom he called the “dumbest of all candidates.” A month earlier, Trump said he had the right to issue an executive order to address the expected influx of mail-in voting, though he clarified, “We haven’t got there yet.”
Trump says the 2020 election was stolen from him, claiming there was widespread fraud and other irregularities. However, election officials, including authorities in Trump’s own administration, insisted there was no proof to support those claims.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is set to hold a hearing on Thursday. Archivist David Ferriero has signaled that he will start turning over the documents to Congress on Nov. 12 unless there is a court order to stop it.
