Former Lawmakers Urge Court To Reject Trump’s Bogus Assertion Of Executive Privilege

Politico reports, Former lawmakers urge court to reject Trump effort to stymie Jan. 6 committee:

Sixty-six former lawmakers, including two dozen Republicans, have signed on to a legal brief urging a federal judge to reject former President Donald Trump’s effort to block Jan. 6 investigators from accessing his White House’s records.

The brief, which is slated to hit the docket in the D.C. federal District Court on Friday, contends that no possible argument about executive privilege could overcome Congress’ need for documents to probe the violent attack on the Capitol — one fueled by Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

“From what is publicly known, it is clear that Donald Trump played an outsized — and likely central — role in orchestrating the events that gave rise to the January 6th attack,” the lawmakers say in the 21-page brief, signed by 24 Republicans and 42 Democrats. “And many, and perhaps most, of the various means he used or contemplated are documented in the records the Committee seeks and are still not known.”

Though many of the lawmakers who signed the brief retired long before Trump’s tenure in office, the signatories include Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who lost reelection in 2018 and had been an outspoken Trump critic. They also include Reid Ribble, the Wisconsin Republican who announced his retirement amid Trump’s 2016 campaign for office, and Charles Boustany, the Louisiana Republican defeated in a Senate bid the same year.

The lawmakers filed their brief under the umbrella of Protect Democracy, a nonprofit government watchdog. The group argues that Congress must fully understand the attack on the Capitol to appropriately craft a legislative remedy.

“Its power to do so here is not reduced — and is likely elevated — where the targets of the investigation include a former President and sitting Members of Congress,” they write. “Under these circumstances, no personal interests of Donald Trump or disputed and unresolved questions of executive privilege could possibly tilt the scales against disclosing these records to the Select Committee.”

Trump is suing the Jan. 6 select committee and the National Archives to block the release of his White House records to Congress. The committee and NARA are due to file a response to Trump’s suit by Friday, and the case will come before Judge Tanya Chutkan next week.

Trump argues that the committee’s request for documents is too sweeping to be legitimate, lacks a legislative purpose and would eviscerate executive privilege protections for all presidents if allowed. But the panel has brushed aside these claims, rejecting Trump’s broad, categorical privilege claims and noting that the privilege was meant to be narrowly tailored to protect candid advice — not cover up alleged wrongdoing.

The Jan. 6 committee is hopeful for a rapid resolution of its lawsuit to clear away legal hurdles to getting crucial information. Chutkan has been among the most vocal advocates for strict treatment of the Jan. 6 rioters, describing their offenses as a fundamental assault on democracy.

In their brief, the lawmakers say that Trump’s ability to assert executive privilege is limited to acts he took in his official capacity as president — not in service of his reelection or private campaign-related business.

“Senate Minority Leader McConnell explained, the efforts to overturn the election were not the official acts of a President; they were ‘a disgraceful dereliction of duty,’” they write. “The executive privilege does not apply, thus ending the inquiry and dooming the motion presently before the Court.”

Democrats who signed the brief include former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), whose former aide Kristin Amerling is one of the Jan. 6 committee’s top staffers. The Democratic signers also include former Reps. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), John Barrow (D-Ga.), Lois Capps (D-Calif.) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.).

In a related effort, in An Open Letter in Defense of Democracy published simultaneously by The New Republic and The Bulwark:

We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things.

Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we believe in the pluralism that is at the heart of democracy.

But right now we agree on a fundamental point: We need to join together to defend liberal democracy.

Because liberal democracy itself is in serious danger. Liberal democracy depends on free and fair elections, respect for the rights of others, the rule of law, a commitment to truth and tolerance in our public discourse. All of these are now in serious danger.

The primary source of this danger is one of our two major national parties, the Republican Party, which remains under the sway of Donald Trump and Trumpist authoritarianism. Unimpeded by Trump’s defeat in 2020, and unfazed by the January 6 insurrection, Trump and his supporters actively work to exploit anxieties and prejudices, to promote reckless hostility to the truth and to Americans who disagree with them, and to discredit the very practice of free and fair elections in which winners and losers respect the peaceful transfer of power.

So we, who have differed on so much in the past—and who continue to differ on much today—have come together to say:

We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to change state election laws to limit voter participation.

We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to empower state legislatures to override duly appointed election officials and interfere with the proper certification of election results, thereby substituting their own political preferences for those expressed by citizens at the polls.

We vigorously oppose the relentless and unending promotion of unprofessional and phony “election audits” that waste public money, jeopardize public electoral data and voting machines, and generate paranoia about the legitimacy of elections.

We urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass effective, national legislation to protect the vote and our elections, and if necessary to override the Senate filibuster rule.

And we urge all responsible citizens who care about democracy—public officials, journalists, educators, activists, ordinary citizens—to make the defense of democracy an urgent priority now.

Now is the time for leaders in all walks of life—for citizens of all political backgrounds and persuasions—to come to the aid of the Republic.

See An Open Letter in Defense of Democracy for the signatories.

Finally Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, a Tyranny Expert Sounds The Alarm On 2024 Election: It’s Happening:

Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism, last Friday sounded what could be one of the loudest alarms yet on the 2024 election.

Snyder, talking with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, noted how former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 result had relied on “personal charisma and signals to his followers and a few people in the Justice Department and hope.”

But if Trump does decide to officially enter the 2024 race, Snyder warned this time around he’ll also have “a whole bunch of institutional machinery” with the installation of partisan election officials who back his 2020 lies, which for them legitimizes throwing the vote, “plus a whole lot of time to plan.”

See, Michigan GOP is Installing Conspiracy Nuts in Critical Swing-State Election Posts (excerpt):

Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of Michigan’s Republican Party, said the new GOP focus on elections officials marks an ominous strategy.

“It’s kind of scary looking ahead because the Republicans are making no secret about their plans to create chaos and throw a wrench in the gears of the next election,” Timmer told The Daily Beast, “trying to put people in place who will go beyond what the law allows and do things in the next election that they didn’t feel they had people in place to do in the last one.”

“What we know historically is that a failed coup is a trial run for a successful coup,” said Snyder. “Usually when you fail in a coup, something happens to you— and Mr. Trump, nothing has happened to him.”

Are you paying attention Attorney General Merrick Garland? For God’s sake man, do something already!

Melber asked Snyder if he feared a coordinated effort that could swing the election. “We should be thinking about this as what is happening and then ask what we can do to prevent it,” he replied.