Former president Trump’s attempt to invoke “executive privilege” in his desperate attempt to withhold documents from the Special Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol armed insurrection and attempted coup has no legal or logical merit.
First, the documents do not belong to him. They are the property of the American people.
Beyond that, as a former president he has no executive status. Only a sitting president can claim executive privilege, and Joe Biden has declined to invoke it to prevent the Trump documents from being turned over to the committee.
Aside from these iron-clad legal and Constitutional facts, the gravity, consequences and continuing threat of the January 6 insurrection can only be successfully disinfected with sunlight. The survival of our democracy depends on it.
Each of Trump’s SCOTUS appointees, in their confirmation hearings, pledged to be apolitical and non-tribal in interpreting the Constitution.
The sincerity of those pledges will be determined shortly. Trump’s appeal of a lower court ruling has no merit.
SCOTUS should simply decline to take the case.