President Donald Trump has invoked executive privilege to block courtroom opponents from accessing evidence in an ongoing lawsuit alleging he incited violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the Justice Department revealed Wednesday.

The five-year-old lawsuit, brought by police officers injured while trying to repel the violent mob that day, contends that Trump’s fiery speech to supporters sparked the riot that nearly upended the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden and injured 140 officers.

In October it came to light that the BBC had doctored footage of the speech, which caused uproar and accusations Trump was depicted as inciting rioters when the heavily edited speech was broadcast to viewers at the time.

In recent months, Trump has pardoned and ended criminal cases against more than 1,500 people charged for their role in the Jan. 6 events. He has also issued a sweeping pardon last month for prominent allies who faced legal scrutiny for their involvement in the effort and claimed the FBI intentionally sparked the Capitol chaos.

Unclear which records Trump seeks to withhold

While the specific records Trump aims to keep from the plaintiffs remain unclear, according to Politico, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed that the president has chosen to fight disclosure of some material subpoenaed from the National Archives and Records Administration last year.

“The President asserted executive privilege over the discovery requests in this case because the overly broad requests demanded documents that were either presidential communications or communications among the president’s staff that are clearly constitutionally protected from discovery,” Jackson stated.

Delays in accessing White House records

Attorneys for the police officers have expressed frustration over prolonged delays in accessing White House records from Trump’s first term, now held by the National Archives. Although the Biden White House routinely waived executive privilege to support investigators’ requests for Trump’s records, they did not respond to the lawsuit-related request before Biden left office in January 2025, states Politico.

Trump initially battled congressional efforts to access his records, taking the fight to the Supreme Court, which upheld a lower-court ruling allowing the Archives to release the records. However, a sitting president’s view of executive privilege carries far more weight than a former president’s.

Justice Department confirms Trump’s privilege claim

During a hearing Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, Justice Department attorney Alexander Haas confirmed that Trump is challenging some of the plaintiffs’ requests, although he lacked specifics on the volume of records or whether a log of the items has been prepared. Haas pledged to provide those details to the court in a report next week.

The year-old subpoena seeks records related to the January 6 rally at the Ellipse, documents about efforts to get Trump to condemn the violence, records on the potential for violence that day, communications about alleged election fraud and the certification of electors, and any strategy to overturn the November 2020 election results.

Trump’s defense and the BBC controversy

In response to the lawsuits, Trump has argued that he was immune from liability because he was speaking and acting in his official capacity as president on January 6. His lawyers have also contended that his Ellipse statements were protected by the First Amendment and cannot result in liability.

The controversy over Trump’s Jan. 6 actions has extended to media coverage, with the BBC facing criticism for allegedly doctoring footage of Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. The Express reported that the BBC selectively edited the speech to remove Trump’s call for peaceful protest, fueling accusations of bias and misrepresentation for which Trump threatened to sue for $1 billion and the BBC apologised for it’s “error of judgement”, and the corporation’s director-general Tim Davie resigned afterwards, without admitting legal liability.

As Trump continues to fight the release of records and reshape the narrative around Jan. 6, the BBC controversy underscores the ongoing tensions and competing perspectives surrounding one of the most tumultuous periods in recent American history.