House January 6 committee now has all the White House records Trump tried to block
By Annie Grayer and Zachary Cohen, CNN
The House select committee investigating January 6 has received all 700-plus pages from the National Archives that former President Donald Trump had tried to block the panel from receiving.
A spokesperson for the National Archives told CNN, “Yesterday evening NARA provided the Select Committee with all the records at issue in the litigation.”
The Supreme Court cleared the way for the panel to receive the documents earlier this week.
The records now in the committee’s possession could help answer some of the most closely guarded facts of what happened between Trump and other high-level officials on January 6, 2021, and fill in key holes in the committee’s investigation.
The Archives said in a court filing in October that the records Trump wanted to keep secret include handwritten memos from his chief of staff Mark Meadows about January 6, call logs of the then-President and former Vice President Mike Pence, and White House visitor records.
Based on a sworn declaration from the National Archives’ B. John Laster, the records Trump was trying to keep secret from the committee also included working papers from Meadows, the press secretary and a White House lawyer who had notes and memos about Trump’s efforts to undermine the election.
In the Meadows documents alone, there are three handwritten notes about the events of January 6 and two pages listing briefings and telephone calls about the Electoral College certification, the archivist said.
The documents the panel received also included 30 pages of Trump’s daily schedule, White House visitor logs and call records, Laster wrote. The call logs, schedules and switchboard checklists document “calls to the President and Vice President, all specifically for or encompassing January 6, 2021,” Laster said.
A committee source would not share what was in the tranche of documents the panel has received.
The panel is also hoping to receive from the Archives never-before-seen drafts of videos Trump made on January 6 before releasing the final video calling on his supporters to leave the US Capitol.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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