Trump v. Thompson - 455 U.S. App. D.C. 49, 20 F.4th 10 (2021)

Rule:

It must be presumed that the incumbent President is vitally concerned with and in the best position to assess the present and future needs of the Executive Branch, and to support invocation of the executive privilege accordingly. It is the new President who has the information and attendant duty of executing the laws in light of current facts and circumstances, and who has the primary responsibility of deciding when presidential privilege must be claimed.

Facts:

On January 6, 2021, a mob professing support for then-President Trump violently attacked the United States Capitol in an effort to prevent a Joint Session of Congress from certifying the electoral college votes designating Joseph R. Biden the 46th President of the United States. The rampage left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol. Then-Vice President Pence, Senators, and Representatives were all forced to halt their constitutional duties and flee the House and Senate chambers for safety. The House of Representatives subsequently established the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, and charged it with investigating and reporting on the "facts, circumstances, and causes relating to" the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and its "interference with the peaceful transfer of power[.]" House Resolution also tasked the January 6^th Committee with, among other things, making "legislative recommendations" and proposing "changes in law, policy, procedures, rules, or regulations" both to prevent future acts of such violence and to "improve the security posture of the United States Capitol Complex[.]”

The January 6^th Committee sent a request to the Archivist of the United States under the Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. § 2205(2)(C), seeking the expeditious disclosure of presidential records pertaining to the events of January 6th, the former President's claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and other related documents. The Archivist advised former President Trump and President Biden of three tranches of disclosures in connection to the request of the January 6^th Committee. In all tranches, former President advised the Archivist that he was asserting executive privilege over the pages. After reviewing all the documents involved in the tranches, President Biden informed the Archivist that the President had "determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States” and withheld the exercise of such in the requested documents sans those identified as allowable disclosures.

On October 18, 2021, former President Trump brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to halt the disclosure of documents to the January 6th Committee. He filed suit "solely in his official capacity as a former President[,]" asserting claims under the Presidential Records Act, its regulations, the Declaratory Judgment Act, Executive Order No. 13,489, and the Constitution. Former President Trump argued that the Committee's request seeks disclosure of records protected by executive privilege and lacks a valid legislative purpose. He sought a declaratory judgment that the Committee's request is invalid and unenforceable, as well an injunction preventing the Committee "from taking any actions to enforce the request[]" or "using * * * any information obtained as a result of the request[]" and barring the Archivist from "producing  the requested information[.]" Mr. Trump also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction "prohibiting Defendants from enforcing or complying with the Committee's request." The district court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction, ruling that former President Trump's "assertion of privilege is outweighed by President Biden's decision not to uphold the privilege," and declining to "second guess that decision by undertaking a document-by-document review[.]" The court added that the Committee needs the documents to understand the "circumstances leading up to January 6[,]" and to "identify effective reforms," and that "President Biden's decision not to assert the privilege alleviates any remaining concern that the requests are overly broad."

Issue:

Did the district court err in ruling that former President Trump’s assertion of executive privilege was outweighed by President Biden’s decision?

Answer:

No.

Conclusion:

To start, as the incumbent, President Biden is the principal holder and keeper of executive privilege, and he speaks authoritatively for the interests of the Executive Branch. Under our Constitution, we have one President at a time. As between a former and an incumbent President, "only the incumbent is charged with performance of the executive duty under the Constitution." To be sure, former President Trump had important insight on the value of preserving the confidentiality of records created during his administration. But it was only President Biden who can make a fully informed and circumspect assessment of all the competing needs and interests of the Executive Branch. These might include (to name just a few) the current and prospective threats to democratic institutions and the electoral process, intelligence on domestic extremists, the full panoply of competing privilege claims and disputes between the Executive Branch and Congress, the sensitive status of interbranch relations at multiple levels, and the costs and benefits of a privilege battle or disclosure at the time the matter arises. The Supreme Court underscored this point when it held, in rejecting a claim of executive privilege by another former President, that "it must be presumed that the incumbent President is vitally concerned with and in the best position to assess the present and future needs of the Executive Branch, and to support invocation of the privilege accordingly." So President Biden's explicit and informed judgment "detracts from the weight of" former President Trump's view that disclosure in these circumstances "impermissibly intrudes into the executive function and the needs of the Executive Branch." In addition, President Biden has identified weighty reasons for declining to assert privilege here. He grounded his decision in the "unique and extraordinary circumstances" of the January 6th attack—"an unprecedented effort to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power" that "threaten[ed] not only the safety of Congress and others present at the Capitol, but also the principles of democracy enshrined in our history and our Constitution." President Biden further emphasized Congress's "compelling need in service of its legislative functions to understand the circumstances that led to these horrific events." President Biden also tied his decision to "[t]he available evidence to date[,]" which he concluded "establishes a sufficient factual predicate for the Select Committee's investigation" of these presidential papers. Finally, President Biden acknowledged the "constitutional protections of executive privilege[,]" but explained that "the conduct under investigation extends far beyond typical deliberations concerning the proper discharge of the President's constitutional responsibilities[,]" and the privilege "should not be used to shield * * * information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution." The record also showed that, for the documents over which the former President asserted privilege, President Biden and his staff took at least a month to review each tranche. During that time, former President Trump's views were obtained. In addition, the sitting President and the Committee reached compromises under which the Committee deferred its request for some documents.

President Biden's explanation also made clear that his decision respected and preserved the strong constitutional reasons for executive privilege at the heart of the former President's objection. Here, the letter showed that President Biden's judgment was of a piece with decisions made by other Presidents to waive privilege in times of pressing national need. For example, President Nixon decided that executive privilege would "not be invoked as to any testimony concerning * * * discussions of possible criminal conduct" as part of the Senate Select Committee's investigation of Watergate. During congressional investigations into the Iran-Contra affair, President Reagan authorized testimony and the production of documents, including excerpts from his personal diaries. In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney sat for a more than three-hour interview with the commission investigating the attacks. And President Trump himself chose not to invoke privilege to prevent former FBI Director James Comey from testifying before Congress, despite (borne out) expectations that the testimony would include Comey's recollections of confidential conversations with President Trump. In short, President Biden's considered judgment that the interests of the United States and the interests of the Executive Branch favor disclosure in this instance substantially "detracts from the weight of" former President Trump's contrary privilege contention.