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U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to put on hold her
ruling from Tuesday allowing a House of Representatives
committee to obtain Trump White House records relating to the
deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"This court will not effectively ignore its own reasoning," she
wrote.
Trump's lawyers had asked Chutkan to pause enforcement of her
ruling while he appeals it to a higher court. Trump made a
similar request to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia, which has yet to act on his request.
The National Archives, a federal agency that holds Trump's White
House records, is scheduled to give Congress hundreds of pages
of documents on Friday.
Chutkan's decision allowed the House committee investigating the
attack to access telephone records, visitor logs and other White
House documents that Trump wants blocked.
The Republican former president had argued that the materials
requested by the committee were covered by a legal doctrine
known as executive privilege that protects the confidentiality
of some White House communications.
But Chutkan, in her Tuesday ruling, rejected that argument, in a
clear win for congressional oversight powers.
The committee has said it needs the requested materials to
understand the role Trump may have played in fomenting the riot
in which his supporters aimed to block lawmakers from certifying
Democrat Joe Biden's presidential win.
Four people died on Jan. 6, one shot dead by police and the
other three of natural causes, and more than 100 police officers
were injured in the attack. A Capitol Police officer who had
been attacked by protesters died the next day and four other
police officers who defended the Capitol later died by suicide.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey;
Editing by Scott Malone and Peter Cooney)
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