Thread by @svdate

NEW -- Trump went to federal court to keep his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection a secret.

At his first hearing today, the judge had ... questions.

huffpost.com/entry/trump-ja…

“Isn’t the best person to determine executive privilege the executive?” Judge Tanya Chutkan asked Trump lawyer Justin Clark.

Clark answered: “Not the incumbent executive.”

Trump’s lawyers had argued that a 1974 Supreme Court case regarding Richard Nixon’s attempt to have White House recordings he had made destroyed after he resigned from office gave Trump the right to assert privilege even if Biden refused to do so.

But Chutkan pointed out that Congress had superseded that case by passing the Presidential Records Act in 1978, which gives the sitting president the ultimate decision on whether to assert privilege.

“I’m not sure that case is as helpful to you as you think it is,” Chutkan told Clark. She added that Congress seemed to have a legitimate interest in finding out how the insurrection came to be. “The Jan. 6 riot happened in the Capitol. That is literally Congress’ house.”

Chutkan said she did agree with Trump’s lawyers on one point: that the committee’s requests for documents seemed “alarmingly broad,” asking for some records going back to April 2020, including polling data.

Douglas Letter, House general counsel, said that date was relevant because it was when Trump began falsely claiming in Twitter posts that the coming election would be rigged if he lost.

Chutkan, though, wondered whether trying to make sense of Trump’s tweets was a good use of time. “I’m not sure there is an answer about why the president was tweeting what he was tweeting,” she said.