President Trump has directed the National Archives and Records Administration to turn over documents that former President Biden tried to keep from Congress, rejecting Biden's assertion of executive privilege across materials sought by four separate congressional probes.
White House counsel David Warrington laid out the decision in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, writing that the Trump administration "does not uphold the former President's assertion of privilege" and that shielding the records is "not in the best interests of the United States."
The directive covers a tranche of documents requested by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and two additional congressional inquiries. The investigations touch on the cover-up of Biden's health and cognitive decline, the Biden family's financial dealings, and what the White House described as politically motivated probes targeting Trump and his allies during the Biden era.
According to Fox News, Biden moved to block the records through two letters to NARA, dated Oct. 22 and Dec. 3, identifying the documents he wanted shielded. By Dec. 10, NARA informed the current White House that Biden had formally asserted executive privilege over the requested materials.
Warrington's letter dismantles the claim piece by piece. He acknowledged that the Supreme Court has recognized executive privilege as a constitutional protection, then made clear that recognition has limits. On the question of Biden's son Hunter holding a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while then-Vice President Biden oversaw Ukraine policy, Warrington was blunt:
"I am 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."
On the broader question of why executive privilege cannot serve as a blanket shield, the White House offered an equally direct principle: the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield from Congress evidence of a president's efforts to imprison his opponent.
Warrington closed with an unambiguous instruction to NARA:
"President Trump instructs you to provide to these congressional committees the pages identified as privileged by the former President."
This is not the first time the Trump White House has overridden Biden's privilege claims. In December, Warrington denied Biden's privilege request over documents related to the Biden administration's use of the autopen, a mechanical device that reproduces a signature.
The autopen issue sits at the center of one of the most consequential questions of the Biden presidency: who was actually making decisions? Concerns over Biden's mental acuity reached a boiling point in the early summer of 2024, following a debate performance that shattered the carefully maintained public narrative. Biden dropped out of the race shortly after.
Warrington framed the stakes plainly in a prior letter:
"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."
Biden, for his part, pushed back in June with a statement calling the accusations "ridiculous."
"Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false."
The statement raises more questions than it settles. If everything was above board, if Biden was fully in command and every decision was his own, then the records should vindicate him. The fact that his legal team fought to keep them from Congress suggests the documents tell a different story than the press conferences did.
Executive privilege exists for a reason. It protects the confidentiality of presidential deliberations so that advisors can speak freely and presidents can govern without every internal conversation becoming a political weapon. That principle is sound.
But the principle was never designed to let a former president bury evidence of potential misconduct after leaving office. There is a meaningful difference between protecting candid policy discussions and hiding whether the 46th president was cognitively capable of executing the duties of his office. One is governance. The other is a cover-up.
The same party that spent years demanding transparency from the Trump administration, that cheered the release of internal White House documents during multiple investigations, now wants executive privilege treated as an impenetrable wall. The standard shifts depending on who benefits. It always does.
With the privilege claim rejected and NARA directed to comply, the documents now move toward congressional committees with subpoena power and an appetite for answers. Four investigations will have access to materials Biden's team spent months trying to lock away.
The questions those records may answer are not abstract. They are concerned whether a president's diminished capacity was concealed from the American public. Whether family financial entanglements influenced policy. Whether the apparatus of federal law enforcement was turned against a political opponent. These are not partisan curiosities. They are the kind of questions that executive privilege was never meant to suppress.
Biden said the accusations were ridiculous. Congress is about to find out.
