Former President Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows asked the Supreme Court in a filing Friday for a “prompt” answer regarding Trump’s lawsuit against the House Jan. 6 committee that is seeking documents from the former president and allies.
Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, filed an amicus brief requesting the Supreme Court quickly take up a lawsuit that aims to block communications and documents Trump had leading up to Jan. 6 from Congress.
The House Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot has said Trump, Meadows and other allies of the former president had to turn over communications relating to the events leading up to that day.
Trump has claimed executive privilege protects the communications he had within his administration, an argument lower courts have rejected.
The case is now at the Supreme Court, which should give a “prompt” response because it “raises important and timely issues,” Terwilliger said in the filing, first reported by Politico.
Terwilliger said the case gives the court the opportunity to “provide a needed check on continued growth of congressional investigations” and “to opine on whether Congress and the incumbent President may agree to override” the protections of executive privilege.
Meadows has been a focus in the House’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack as he has refused to come before the panel to discuss his communications with the former president leading up to the Capitol riot.
He turned over thousands of messages he had with Trump and other GOP lawmakers that showed he was one of the key planners for some of the events that occurred on Jan. 6.
Meadows has refused to give communications he had with Trump himself, citing executive privilege, despite the revealed messages showing some Republicans were texting Meadows during the riot asking him to convince Trump to call off the rioters.
Terwilliger said if the Supreme Court sides with Trump and says he “has a valid claim of privilege which President Biden cannot waive, or that the Select Committee is not pursuing a valid legislative purpose, then the Select Committee would need to narrow its investigation (or at least go back to the drawing board) in a way that might moot much of the pending litigation.”
The Supreme Court has not commented on the case and does not have a deadline to respond as the investigation into the attack a year ago continues.
The Jan. 6 panel is asking former Vice President Mike Pence to testify about the events of that day later in January.