An important piece of the puzzle.
Most important takeaway (to me)
“Congressional investigation is usually sweeping; its issues are seldom narrowly defined,and the inquiry is not restricted by the rules of evidence.
Finally, when Congress is investigating, it is by its own account often in an adversarial position to the executive branch and initiating action to override judgments made by the executive branch. This increases the likelihood that
candid advice from executive branch advisers will be taken out of context or misconstrued. For all these reasons,the constitutional privilege that protects executive branch deliberations against judicial subpoenas must also apply, perhaps even with greater force, to Congress’ demands for information.The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has explicitly held that the privilege protects presidential communications against congressional demands. During the Watergate investigation, the Court of Appeals rejected a Senate committee’s efforts to obtain tape recordings of conversations in President Nixon’s offices. The court held that the tapes were constitutionally privileged....”
Bump!
Aaaaannnndddd....we’re done here.
In your hat Kamala Harris et al.
Kamala is not yet ready for the big stage.
Sessions was being asked to pre-empt the President’s executive privilege. I don’t know why he didn’t just point that out when the senator said only the President has the privilege, not the AG.
What several Dems tried to do was goad Sessions into agreeing that Trump had declared executive privilege. Then the headlines would so read “Trump invoked Executive Privilege like Nixon”. Instead Sessions was saying I am not going to disclose my discussions with the President because he has not had a chance to invoke executive privilege. I will not let the cat out of the bag. Give the Presidnet an opportunity to examine your questions, then he may allow me to divulge our discussions.
Now it seems that Coates (DNI) and Rogers (NSA) refused to discuss what they discussed with Trump, but when taken into executive sessions they spilled their guts. I like Sessions’ method better.
The Dems have made Sessions’ perfectly standard refusal to disclose the contents of his private conversations with the president without Trump waiving his right to executive privilege their main talking point. What this says to me is they know Sessions did an unassailable job with the actual substance of his testimony, and now they are grasping at straws to open up any line of attack they can.
I’m thinking the GOP members of the house should be calling for a special prosecutor to investigate whether Democrats were behind the attempted mass assassination of GOP elected officials.