so. thank you for the indulgence on that. now let s get into it. the d.c. circuit court of appeals handed down a serious defeat to former president donald trump tonight. a surprisingly resounding defeat. this is a case about his efforts to keep records and documents from his time in the white house from ending up in the hands of the january 6th investigation in congress. so this was the decision tonight, this is the federal appeals court in d.c. there s district courts, circuit courts, and then the supreme court. this is a circuit court decision that s an appeals court, one level below the u.s. supreme court, and the three-judge panel on this u.s. circuit court of appeals, they ruled unanimously tonight that the trump white house documents do indeed have to get handed over to the january 6th investigation. they did pause the effect of this ruling for two weeks to give trump the opportunity to appeal this ruling up to the supreme court if he wants to. and presumably he wants to.
its unanimous ruling, then describes trump s efforts to resist providing materials to this investigation. the ruling describes the lawsuit, for example, that he brought in october to try to block the investigation from obtaining his records. the court describes his resounding loss in the lower court in that case. but this is important. it could become materially important in days ahead. the court in this ruling tonight is quite blunt about the legitimacy of the january 6th investigation. and they re quite blunt about trump s failure to state any legal justification for him ducking their questions and their demands. quote, the very essence of the article one power, meaning the article one power in the constitution, the part that defines the roles of congress, the very essence of art kun one power is very legislating, and so there would seem to be few if any more impair active interests squarely within congress s
washts, for a, quote, wild response to what he had been alleging for months was a stolen election. on january 6th, president trump directed his followers to go to the capitol and quote fight for their country with the aim of prevents congress s certification of the electoral vote. the rule quotes from his speech that day, you ll never take back our country with weakness. we have come to demand that congress do the right thing, and only count certain electors. and equally essential aspect of the rule of law says the ruling is the peaceful transition of power and the constitutional role prescribed for congress in verifying the electoral college vote, to allow the privilege of a no longer sitting president to prevail over congress s need to investigate a violent attack on its home. and its constitutional operations. that would gravely impair the basic function of the legislature. president trump bears the burden of at least showing some weighty interest in continued confidentiality, that
investigation. this is from the chair, bennie thompson, democratic congressman from mississippi, and vice chair, liz cheney, republican congresswoman from wyoming. they say, quote, we applaud the court s decisive ruling, which respects the committee s interest in obtaining white house records and president biden s judgment in allowing those records to be produced. our work moves ahead swiftly. we will get to the truth. swiftly become being a very, very operative word in that statement. joining us now is barbara mcquaid, former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan. always great to see you. thank you so much for being here. my pleasure, rachel. first of all, let me ask you about the pace here before i ask you about the content of this ruling. i ran down the timeline a little bit and sort of asserted to our audience that this is unusually fast for the federal judiciary to move.
he sued to when the judge ruled against him. when the judge ruled against him, definitively, he filed an appeal up to the circuit court. that circuit court, the appeals court also decided they would take it on an expedited basis. they heard the case on november 30th. they just ruled tonight, december 9th. nine days after they heard the arguments in the case. this is not the pace at which stuff usually gets through the federal court system. but now, trump s last hope, now that he s lost both at the district court and at the circuit court. his last hope is to appeal to the united states supreme court. and the court has given him 14 days to decide whether or not he s going to do that. if he doesn t appeal to the supreme court in time, trump s white house documents and records will get handed over to the january 6th investigators. 14 days from now would be when tonight s ruling would go into effect barring an appeal to the u.s. supreme court, for the