President Trump on Monday swept aside Joe Biden's attempt to invoke executive privilege over documents tied to four congressional investigations, directing the National Archives to turn the materials over to Senate committees without delay.
White House counsel David Warrington sent a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration making the administration's position explicit. The assertion of privilege, Warrington wrote, is "not in the best interests of the United States."
The letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, leaves no ambiguity about where the current White House stands. Warrington stated that President Trump "does not uphold the former President's assertion of privilege" and that the claim "is not justified."
The dispute centers on documents connected to investigations into three broad areas:
Biden asserted privilege over the requested materials in letters to NARA dated October 22 and December 3. NARA then informed the White House of Biden's claim on December 10. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the Senate Judiciary Committee were among those seeking the records.
Warrington's letter did not treat Biden's privilege claim as a close call. He acknowledged that the Supreme Court has recognized executive privilege protections, but made clear that those protections have limits. He wrote that he was "unaware of a Supreme Court ruling or constitutional text that extends those protections to former President Biden's efforts to assist his son's shady business deals."
One of the sharpest sections of Warrington's letter targets the circumstances surrounding Biden's mental fitness and who was actually running the executive branch. Warrington referenced a prior letter in which the White House laid out the stakes plainly:
The abuse of the autopen that took place during the Biden Presidency, and the extraordinary efforts to shield President Biden's diminished faculties from the public, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again.
This is not a peripheral concern. Concerns over Biden's mental acuity reached a boiling point in June 2024, ultimately leading to Biden dropping out of the presidential race. The 46th president attempted to put the matter to rest with a public statement at the time.
Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations.
Biden called any suggestion otherwise "ridiculous and false."
But asserting something forcefully is not the same as proving it, and executive privilege exists to protect the decision-making process of the presidency, not to seal off evidence that might reveal who was actually making those decisions. If Biden truly made every call himself, the documents should vindicate him. If he didn't, the American public deserves to know who did.
Warrington's letter also addressed the documents related to federal investigations into Trump and his allies during the Biden era. The White House framed this in unmistakable terms:
The constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield from Congress evidence of a President's efforts to imprison his opponent.
That line carries weight precisely because it doesn't overstate the case. Executive privilege was designed to protect candid deliberation inside the White House, not to provide legal cover after the fact for the weaponization of federal law enforcement against political opponents. There is a meaningful difference between protecting the confidentiality of policy discussions and burying evidence of coordinated targeting during a presidential election cycle.
The instruction from the current president to NARA was direct. Warrington wrote:
President Trump instructs you to provide to these congressional committees the pages identified as privileged by the former President.
Fox News Digital reported reaching out to a Biden representative and NARA for comment Monday morning. No responses were included.
The silence is worth noting. Biden's team had no trouble issuing statements when the privilege claims were filed. Now that those claims have been rejected by the sitting president, the quiet says more than any press release could.
Four congressional probes now stand to receive materials that the former president fought to keep sealed. The subjects of those probes, Biden's health, the use of the autopen, politically motivated investigations, and the Biden family's foreign business entanglements, are not abstractions. They go to the heart of whether the executive branch operated with basic transparency and accountability during Biden's tenure.
Executive privilege is a serious constitutional protection. It is not a cleanup tool for a presidency that spent years telling the public one thing while the evidence may show another.
