A US FEDERAL appeals court temporarily blocked the release of records sought by a US House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection as the court considers an emergency request by former president Donald Trump.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Thursday granted an administrative stay sought by Trump.

The stay is intended to give the court time to consider Trump’s arguments against release of the documents, which was otherwise scheduled for today without a court order.

The order effectively delays until the end of this month the release of records that were to be turned over today.

The appeals court set arguments in the case for 30 November.

The House is seeking Trump’s call logs, draft speeches and other documents related to 6 January.

Congress has sought the records to better understand the 6 January attack on the Capitol, in which rioters ransacked the building and forced into hiding politicians who were certifying Trump’s election loss to President Joe Biden.

Biden waived executive privilege on the documents.

Trump then went to court arguing that as a former president, he still had the right to exert privilege over the records and releasing them would damage the presidency in the future.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday rejected those arguments, noting in part: “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president”.

She again denied an emergency motion by Trump on Wednesday.

In their filing to the appeals court, Trump’s lawyers wrote that without a stay, the former president would “suffer irreparable harm through the effective denial of a constitutional and statutory right to be fully heard on a serious disagreement between the former and incumbent president”.

The 30 November arguments will take place before three judges nominated by Democratic presidents: Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, nominated by former president Barack Obama, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of Biden.

The White House also notified a lawyer for Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, that Biden would waive any executive privilege that would prevent Meadows from cooperating with the committee.

The committee has subpoenaed Meadows and more than two dozen other people as part of its investigation.

His lawyer, George Terwilliger, issued a statement in response saying Meadows “remains under the instructions of former president Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege”.

“It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict,” Terwilliger said.