The National Archives and Records Administration intends to release records from former Vice President Mike Pence to the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, informed former President Donald Trump in a letter of the decision after he received instruction from President Joe Biden and consultation “with the Counsel to the President and the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.”
The letter, dated Monday and posted to the National Archives website, said the records would be passed along to the committee on March 3, barring a court order.
Trump moved to block access to some of the records sought by the Jan. 6 committee, writing in a Jan. 18 letter to Ferriero that his records “unquestionably contain information protected from disclosure by the executive and other privileges, including but not limited to the presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.”
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Biden did not support Trump’s claims asserting privilege, according to a letter sent to Ferriero on Tuesday. White House counsel Dana Remus said Biden had determined that “an assertion of such a privilege is not justified and is not in the best interests of the United States.”
“Many of the records as to which the former President has made a claim of privilege in this set of documents, however, were communications concerning the former Vice President’s responsibilities as President of the Senate in certifying the vote of presidential electors on January 6, 2021,” Remus wrote in the letter.
The Jan. 6 panel has already started to receive some records Trump tried to block after the Supreme Court last month refused to block the National Archives from sharing documents from his time in the White House with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, testified before the Jan. 6 committee last week and has supplied documents after receiving a subpoena, according to a CNN report. Short, who was with Pence on Jan. 6 during the Capitol riot, is seen as a critical witness to the inquiry.
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Pence has not testified to the committee, but he did say in an interview on Jan. 27 that Jan. 6 was “a tragic day in the life of the nation.”
