berg80
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- Oct 28, 2017
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The ruling thus seems to reserve for another day the question of whether a former president can assert the privilegeāand Justice Kavanaugh actually wrote a short opinion explaining why he disagrees with the D.C. Circuit on the point.Executive Privilege...and the protections of the 4th Amendment from illegal searches from political opponents.
But the justices also seized on the D.C. Circuitās alternative basis for resolving the caseāwhich is actually far broader than the mere proposition that a former president canāt assert the privilege in the face of the current presidentās objections. Eight justices of the Supreme Court, declined publicly to note that they would disturb the D.C. Circuitās finding that Trumpās executive privilege claim would fail even if he were the incumbent president. In the past, the court observes, Presidents have āwaived privilege in times of pressing national need.ā The D.C. Circuit ruled, and the Supreme Court left undisturbed, that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a āclear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution.ā In such an āextraordinaryā situation, any Presidentās claim of executive privilege will fail to stand up to Congressās need for investigation and, in turn, disclosure of the former president's communications.
Extrapolating from this, the DoJ's interest, representing the people's interest, in pursuing criminal charges supersedes any claim of EP.