- Former President Donald Trump is fighting efforts to investigate his role in the January 6 riot.
- In October, he sued to prevent congressional investigators from obtaining White House records.
- Legal experts have described the litigation as a delay tactic.
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Tuesday filed a legal brief that falsely claims FBI and Senate investigators have cleared his administration of wrongdoing with respect to the January 6 insurrection.
In a 33-page document filed with the US District Court for the District of Colombia, attorneys for Trump argue the House select committee investigating the US Capitol riot should be barred from obtaining White House records, claiming the panel has "already prejudged the facts and circumstances of January 6."
But the attorneys support their argument by saying that Trump did nothing wrong by falsely claiming this was the conclusion of two separate investigations.
"Notwithstanding their allegations and insinuations of conspiracy," the legal brief says of the bipartisan special committee, "investigations by the FBI and the Senate Committee on Government Affairs and Homeland Security rebuff their contentions of wrongdoing by Trump Administration officials. "
While anonymous FBI sources told Reuters in August that their investigation had not uncovered a direct role by Trump and those around him in "organizing the violence" on January 6, that investigation has not concluded and hasn't cleared the previous administration of any "wrongdoing."
Nor has any Senate committee exonerated Trump officials: The Senate report, released by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Committee on Rules and Administration in June of 2021, cited by the former president's lawyers - which they state "never faulted anyone at the White House" - was narrowly focused on "the security, planning, and response failures of the entities directly responsible for Capitol security," as well as intelligence failures by law enforcement.
The select congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack, which is charged with investigating any Trump administration role in the insurrection is the one seeking records from the previous White House, a request approved by the administration of President Joe Biden. (Biden, as the current president, is waiving executive privilege for the records that Trump's attorneys are trying to claim to keep the records from being released.)
That panel has zeroed in on a Trump team "command center" at a Washington hotel where personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, and others coordinated efforts "to deny Biden the presidency," The Washington Post reported.
In their Tuesday filing, Trump's attorneys ask that, if the court should not block the committee's request for records altogether, it should instead subject them to a "full judicial review," delaying the panel's investigation and limiting production to those documents the court deems necessary.
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