Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee recently released a report finding no grounds for Democrats’ allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, but that doesn’t mean the president’s political opponents will give up the claims, explains a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
There may be more interviews with former presidential aides, such as the recent testimony before the House intel panel by former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and outgoing communications director Hope Hicks.
Arising from those interviews is the question of whether executive privilege can be invoked regarding communications involving a president-elect prior to his inauguration.
A new analysis by the Congressional Research Service concludes it’s unclear what kinds of communications can be protected, and it’s even less certain when they involve those of a president-elect.
The analysis explains that while privilege is an implied constitutional principle, derived and “inextricably rooted in the separation of powers,” it is not “absolute.”
“Most claims of privilege, therefore, require a balancing of the president’s need for confidentiality with either the judicial or legislative branches’ need for the information sought,” CRS explained.
The Supreme Court’s only significant analysis of executive privilege comes from two cases involving President Nixon’s unsuccessful attempts to maintain control over his communications and records.
The D.C. Circuit court held that to overcome the privilege, Congress would need to show that “the subpoenaed evidence is demonstrably critical to the responsible fulfillment of the [investigating] Committee’s functions.”
For the rest of this report, and more, please go to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
