The jousting between the Trump and Biden administrations continues, even now.
When Joe Biden was in office, Donald Trump wanted to use executive privilege on various matters, but he was denied on multiple occasions, so he just returned the favor.
Biden was hoping to claim privilege regarding autopen-signed documents, but the White House has denied his bid.
When Biden was in office, and the investigations against Trump were running rampant, the latter requested to invoke executive privilege on several occasions, which were usually denied by Biden.
For instance, in February 2022, Biden rejected Trump’s attempt to protect visitor logs related to the Jan. 6 unrest at the Capitol.
At the time of the request, White House counsel Dana Remus claimed that “in light of the urgency” of the Jan. 6 Committee, the National Archives had 15 days to turn over the requested files.
White House counsel sent a similar notification about a year prior when Trump made a similar request to keep certain documents privileged and out of the hands of the committee.
I don’t want to spend too much time recapping the autopen scandal from the Biden administration, so we are just going to breeze over this for those of you who are new to our pages.
It was revealed after Biden left the White House that an inordinate number of executive orders, including many of the pardons issued by Biden, were signed with the autopen.
When communications pertaining to such documents were later released, it seemed as though Biden was rarely involved in the decision-making, especially regarding the mass pardons issued right before he left office.
The House Oversight Committee reported, “Staffers close to Biden admitted his decline was real. Shockingly, some did not even know who was authorizing signatures in his name or using the autopen. Others invoked the Fifth, refused to testify, and stonewalled the Committee at every turn.”
Biden was hoping to keep his records protected, claiming privilege, as a way to block access to those currently investigating his use of the autopen, but the Trump administration has denied his claim. Biden’s request stated, "I am concerned that disclosure of these materials would damage important institutional interests of the Presidency, including by impairing the ability of future Presidents to receive robust, candid advice from their close advisers. For these reasons, I hereby assert executive privilege over the documents listed.”
It continued, "I have raised no objections to multiple requests for Presidential records from my Administration, and hundreds of documents have already been provided to Congress pursuant to those requests, but the records now proposed for release include documents reflecting presidential decisionmaking and deliberations and other materials that are protected by executive privilege.”
White House Counsel David Warrington responded, "As President Trump has stated, the abuse of the autopen that took place during the Biden Presidency, and the extraordinary efforts to shield President Biden’s diminished faculties from the public, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again.”
This was about as predictable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. After the misery that Biden put Trump through in recent years, there is no way he was going to cut him a break on such a request. But I have to say, I originally thought this was all going to be a nothing burger, but Biden’s insistence on keeping those records privileged definitely caught my attention.
