The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s fight to block release of White House records tied to the House Jan. 6 investigation had already produced one loss in court and one pause on appeal by Nov. 19, 2021. A federal judge in Washington ruled on Nov. 9 that the records could be turned over to Congress. Two days later, the D.C. Circuit entered an administrative injunction that stopped the release while the challenge continued.

That left the National Archives in the middle of a live legal dispute, not at the finish line. The agency had been preparing to release an initial batch of records after the district court ruling, but the appellate court’s order put that plan on hold. The records at issue were part of the House select committee’s request for presidential materials covering the period around the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The legal question was straightforward in one sense and loaded in another: whether Trump could use executive privilege to keep some of those materials from investigators after leaving office. The district judge said the public interest in disclosure outweighed Trump’s objections, but the appeal meant that ruling was not yet the last word. As of Nov. 19, the records had not been handed over under that decision.

The case also showed the unusual posture of a former president fighting the disclosure of records from his own administration. President Joe Biden had declined to back Trump’s privilege claim, which removed the usual executive branch support that such a claim might have had. But the appellate stay kept the dispute alive, and the committee still had to wait for the courts to sort out whether the records would be released and on what timetable.

So on Nov. 19, the real story was not that the documents were already on their way to the committee. It was that Trump had lost at the trial court, won a temporary pause on appeal, and remained in a case that was still very much open.