Free Republic

During his opening remarks in the Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow quoted Democrats' own words against them. He condemned the House Democrats' rush to impeach Trump, adding an article of impeachment for "Obstruction of Congress" rather than litigating a matter of executive privilege in court. He quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), each of whom defended Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder when he was held in contempt of Congress in 2012. "Mr. Schiff did say the courts don't really have a role in this. Executive privilege?...

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said Tuesday that if President Trump refuses to send the documents and witnesses that House Democrats requested in the impeachment inquiry, “We can only conclude that you’re guilty,” sparking critics on Twitter to accuse him of suggesting the president is guilty until proven innocent. "In America, innocent men do not hide and conceal evidence," Swalwell added, in his conversation with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "They are forthcoming and they want to cooperate and the president is acting like a very guilty person right now." Among those objecting to Swalwell's remarks was Ben Williamson, communications director for Rep....

You may have read that a judge has ordered that Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, must testify in response to a Congressional subpoena. What you probably didn’t read in the impeachment press is that the sweeping ruling essentially eliminates a right to confidentiality between a President and his most senior advisers. “The primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” wrote Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in a ruling late Monday that was hailed far and wide as a victory over President Trump’s claim that close advisers have immunity from...

President Trump is within his rights to invoke executive privilege, including when it comes to former White House communications director Hope Hicks, according to Alan Dershowitz. Congressional lawmakers often claim presidents are not "above the law" in many of these cases, but Congress itself is also not "above the law," Dershowitz told host Laura Ingraham on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle." "Each branch of the government has a form of executive privilege," Dershowitz said Wednesday night. "The president is perfectly entitled to invoke executive privilege. If they think it goes too far ... let the courts decide.

Washington (CNN)The Department of Justice informed the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over materials related to the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The move comes ahead of a vote in the committee about whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress over a dispute related to the census and for not complying with subpoenas issued by the committee.

President Donald Trump claimed executive privilege to block Congress’ access to documents about how a citizenship question was added to the 2020 census. The move came as the House Oversight and Reform Committee was beginning proceedings Wednesday morning to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the subpoenas.

Full title: 9 Times The Obama Administration Fought Subpoenas or Blocked Officials from Testifying Before Congress After the long and thorough, and, of course, incredibly expensive Mueller investigation, Democrats were left distraught over a lack of any crime to justify going forward with impeachment. In the wake of the Mueller report, they’ve since promised new investigations in the hopes of finding some crime to justify putting the country through a process that most don’t want us to go through just because Democrats haven’t gotten over the 2016 election. In recent weeks, stories about subpoenas being challenged and Trump officials being...

President Trump asserted his executive-privilege power to protect the presidency from Congress, conservative radio host Mark Levin said Tuesday. "So, why does the president exert executive privilege? Because he's trying to hide crimes or financial misconduct? Or, he doesn't want information to get out? No, because he's protecting the executive branch," Levin said on Fox News' "Hannity." Earlier this month, Trump asserted his executive privilege to protect redacted information in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the Russia investigation as well as the underlying evidence. "Executive privilege can be asserted for a number of reasons, including protecting the privacy of...

Washington seems to be barreling toward a constitutional crisis. Democrats are barraging President Trump with demands for witnesses and documents. Trump has answered by stonewalling, vowing to fight “all the subpoenas.” As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned, Trump seems to be goading the Democratic-controlled House toward impeachment, perhaps because it’s a battle he thinks he can win. Politicians on both sides are repairing to their tribal corners. Is there anyone who can serve as honest referees in this partisan standoff? One answer — don’t laugh — is lawyers. Specifically, Republican lawyers. Even as Republicans in Congress have fallen in line...

As the Democrat Lilliputians try to make Atty. Gen. William Barr the second cabinet officer to be held in contempt of Congress, it is serves us well to remember that Democrats didn’t quite have the same attitude toward a President protecting his administrative turf when the first, Eric Holder, was under President Obama’s executive privilege umbrella during the Fast and Furious scandal (sorry, Joe). Unlike the current “collusion delusion”, Holder/Obama’s Fast and Furious gun-running operation involved real crimes, real dead bodies, and real obstruction of justice as administration officials colluded with Mexican drug cartels to supply them with high-powered semi-automatic...

The White House on Wednesday asserted executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, ramping up its clash with Congress over its investigations into President Trump. The move came just before the House Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over Mueller’s unredacted report and underlying materials, which the panel had subpoenaed. Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote in a letter to the committee's chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), that the administration was following through on its threat to...

The White House invoked executive privilege Wednesday, claiming the right to block lawmakers from the full report from special counsel Robert Mueller on his Trump-Russia probe and escalating the battle between President Donald Trump and Congress. The administration’s decision was announced just as the House Judiciary Committee was gaveling in to consider holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress over failure to release the full report. Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York declared the action by Trump’s Justice Department was a clear new sign of the president’s “blanket defiance” of Congress’ constitutional rights. “Every day we learn...

President Trump asserted executive privilege on Wednesday in a bid to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted report and underlying documents from subpoena by the House Judiciary Committee. The president’s move came after the Justice Department, late Tuesday night, requested that the House Judiciary Committee postpone a scheduled vote on to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to provide the Mueller files to the panel. The Justice Department warned that if the committee did not postpone the vote, the attorney general would recommend that Trump claim executive privilege over the materials. On Wednesday,...

The U.S. Justice Department has agreed to provide congressional investigators confidential records on a failed gun-trafficking operation during the Obama administration known as "Fast and Furious" that long has been criticized by Republican lawmakers. In a statement issued on Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department would hand over documents to the Republican-led House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that had been withheld by Democratic former President Barack Obama's administration. The agreement reached by Republican President Donald Trump's administration will effectively end a six-year long legal battle in which the committee had gone to federal...

Here is the relevant excerpt related to Sessions' correct assertion that he did not have to answer questions about confidential presidential conversations (unless pursuant to a subpoena in a case involving criminal charges, I believe): ============================================================ "...While the considerations that support the concept and assertion of exec­utive privilege apply to any congressional request for information, the privilege itself need not be claimed formally vis-à-vis Congress except in response to a lawful subpoena; in responding to a congressional request for information, the executive branch is not necessarily bound by the lim­its of executive privilege. Executive privilege is constitutionally based. To be...

The Associated Press‏Verified account @AP Follow More BREAKING: White House says President Trump will not claim executive privilege to block Comey testimony.

Just moments before Attorney General Eric Holder was voted in contempt of Congress by Republicans and Democrats in June 2012 , President Obama asserted executive privilege over thousands of documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. Holder was held in contempt for stonewalling and failing to turn over the documents to the House Oversight Committee. Obama granted the executive privilege request despite claiming to have no knowledge about Operation Fast and Furious when it was active from 2009-2010. Now after years of court battles and a federal judge striking down the executive privilege assertion, Obama has finally agreed turned them...

Check your privilege, President Obama. Specifically, your executive privilege. If we time-traveled to the days of our first presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson we would discover that they all used executive privilege. Here's the catch: on average, these presidents invoked executive privilege less than once per year (0.79 times/year). Modern-day presidents abuse executive privilege, a license that is not overtly articulated in the Constitution. In some cases, the Supreme Court has upheld its use as a way for presidents to perform their existing executive duties. Chief Justice Burger...

November 4, 2014BREAKING: DOJ Turns Over 64,000 Fast and Furious Documents Held Under Obama's Executive PrivilegeKatie PavlichAfter years of legal battles between the House Oversight Committee and Attorney General Eric Holder, 64,280 redacted Operation Fast and Furious documents held under President Obama's assertion of executive privilege since 2012, have been turned over by the Department of Justice after an order from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson. The Justice Department was originally ordered to turn over a list of documents, better known as a Vaughn Index, with explanations as to why documents fall under executive privilege claims by November...

The Obama administration is claiming executive privilege over more than 15,000 documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, including correspondence between Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife, according to records received Wednesday night by the watchdog group Judicial Watch. Last month, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to release to Judicial Watch the list of documents, known as a “Vaughn index,” that it is withholding from the public, calling its requests for further delays “unconvincing.” The 1,307-page Vaughn index lists 15,662 documents related to Operation Fast and Furious that the Obama administration is asserting executive privilege over—the first...