What’s next after judge denied Trump request to withhold Jan 6. docs from House committee

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Former President Trump was dealt another legal blow last night, this time in his attempt to keep secret White House documents from the days leading up to and on January 6.

  It is a win for the House select committee investigating the attack, which seeks Trump's materials, and the Biden White House, which supported the release.

  Yamiche Alcindor joins me now to explain what it all means.

  Hello, Yamiche.

  So, walk us through this. We know former President Trump was trying to keep these papers from being accessed by the House committee. Tell us why this federal judge ruled as he did — as she did.

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  Well, as you just noted, Judy, a federal judge in the District of Columbia has ruled that former President Trump, his request to hold back these documents is denied.

  That is in fact a win for the House select committee that is trying to seek these documents related to January 6. What is important to understand here is that this is a judge that really issued a 39-page biting decision in this case.

  I want to read to you part of what she wrote. She wrote: "Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff," referring to former President Donald Trump, "is not president."

  She went on to say: "Former President Trump retains the right to assert that his records are privileged, but the incumbent president," talking about President Biden, "is not constitutionally obliged to honor that assertion."

  So there you have it. Really this is a judge taking the idea that President Biden, who has said that he's going to waive executive privilege on these documents, these documents that have been requested, because the issues related to January 6 are so extraordinary.

  Now, the former president is continuing to assert that there is executive privilege claims here. I should also note that this is really a large number of documents being requested by the House select committee.

  When you look at the documents that they're looking at, they're looking — they're looking for communications, videos, photographs related to former President Trump's actions on January 6, his speech on that day, also the planning and preparation that went into the rally, as well as the march.

  They're also looking at White House communications, visitor logs, call logs. Another thing that they're looking for is the White House's sort of response to what was happening in that — during the violence on Capitol — on the Capitol that day.

  And, also, they're looking for — and I have to read part of this because it's so extraordinary — all documents and communications from April 1, 2020, to January 20, 2021. So that's a large breadth of documents that these lawmakers say are relevant and needed for this case.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, Yamiche, what is next here? What legal recourse does the former president have?

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  Well, there's a deadline looming.

  The National Archives has indicated that, if there is not a decision reached by Friday to stop them from releasing these documents, that they will release it to lawmakers on Friday. So there's sort of a time crunch there.

  We should also note that this is the first time a federal judge is weighing in on competing executive privilege claims from a current president going against a former president. Now, when you look at sort of the way that this case will go, former President Trump has already appealed. So there's already an appeals process happening.

  Once that happens, whatever the appeals court decision is, the loser, so whoever — whoever is not happy with the decision, they will likely then appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will then decide whether or not they want to hear this case. If they decide to grant that emergency request, it could be a matter of days to hear from the Supreme Court or it could take longer.

  But there is going to be this long legal process, or this long — or this legal process happening because former President Trump has said that he is going to continue to pursue this. And Democrats, including chair of the House select committee, Bennie Thompson, has said that he believes lawmakers have the law on their side.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And speaking of Chair Thompson and that committee, Yamiche, we know they're seeking other information beyond what they're asking from President Trump.

  This week, they let it be known that they have issued subpoenas for a number of senior officials who worked in the Trump White House. Where does all that stand?

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  That's right.

  Well, just in the last two days, this House select committee investigating the Capitol attack have doubled the number of subpoena requests. Now the number is at least 35 subpoenas.

  I want to read to you some of the people that are on the request — that have been subpoenaed now. They include Michael Flynn, who was a former national security adviser under former President Trump, Bill Stepien, who was a campaign manager — was the campaign manager for the Trump 2020 reelection campaign, Kayleigh McEnany. She was the former White House press secretary under President Trump.

  Stephen Miller, a former Trump senior adviser who worked a lot on immigration, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign, and a key spokesman for the former president. John Eastman is also on this list. He was a conservative lawyer who worked on a now dubious sort of memo that was trying to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the Constitution and throw out the 2020 election results.

  I should also note that it's anyone's guess who — how these people will respond. The former president is really pushing people not to respond to these subpoenas, not to cooperate at all with the select committee. But there have been some people engaging with the committee, so we will just have to see what happens here.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Following it all, Yamiche Alcindor.

  Thank you, Yamiche.

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  Thanks so much.