Near a million dead on his watch and led a conspiracy to overthrow the United States government even as he was the head of that government (so many other bits of corruption). In the history of United States politics there has never been a more corrupt person that trump. And that includes some really nasty and unsavory former presidents.
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As I understand it, there is no attorney-client privilege between the President and White House counsel. If that was any impediment.
I’m wondering whether the issue can be litigated in a confidential way through a DC District court judge. It seems to me there must be a mechanism for prosecutors to seek to compel testimony through a challenge to any executive privilege claim, and do it in a way that doesn’t reveal the grand jury proceedings. If it’s in secret there is no incentive to grand stand or take political positions for right wing media consumption. To me, this is important as it will expedite a resolution and give Cippollone cover to spill the beans.
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In addition to a carve out for criminal conduct, as I understand the privilege, it doesn’t just blanket everything Trump says. It is a qualified privilege and only applies to certain things, such communications made in support of official presidential decision-making. I cannot fathom even this Supreme Court concluding that decision-making over an attempted coup would be privileged. At the very least, (Alan Dershowitz’s opinion notwithstanding), the politics of the election are not part of the president’s official duties qua President.
Here is a good, if long, memorandum regarding the scope of the privilege:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47102
Here’s an important quote:
The courts also appear to have established that former Presidents retain the ability to assert executive privilege over protected communications that occurred during their term of office. The Communications Privilege protects the presidency, however, and not individual Presidents; therefore, the strength and the ultimate success of any privilege claim by a former President appears to be highly influenced by whether that claim is supported by the sitting President.
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Or even paper records. The IG (Incinerator General) over at the DHS (Department of Hiding Skullduggery) may have already gotten to your filing cabinet.
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There’s no reason to believe they have any dirt on Cipollone. He’s survived multiple high level background checks, was Asst. AG under Barr in the 90’s, and was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. He’s not going to risk criminal exposure to protect Trump.
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I’m sorry, the Ministry of Deletions will be confiscating your post.
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It’s not entirely true that the current President can waive executive privilege claims by former Presidents. Former Presidents have to assert that privilege though, through counsel or themselves. Failure to make a legal assertion means there is no privilege to claim however. And claiming the privilege in order to avoid criminal embarassment is at best borderline obstruction of justice and/or Congress. And that’s why we see folks like Patsy Baloney trying to claim privilege while Twitler and his minions are loath to file statements to courts or investigators about enumerated specific privileged conversations. The Twisslerings make general public statements about executive privilege but rarely directly make specific assertion of it in Federal courts. And Patsy’s lawyers will need to demonstrate to a judge what conversations are specifically privileged when it goes before Federal Courts…along with legal documents signed by Twitler and his legal representatives to the effect that those are specifically privileged conversations.
Another clear thing is that the invented Privilege, such as it exists, does not exist in a written down law passed by the Congress. It’s a Federal judicial nicety. Meaning any Federal judge can just laugh the assertion out of court if they so wish. (There’s been Supreme Court rulings about Executive Privilege…but it is a creature of the Executive Branch’s imagination and not one that the Congress has directly codified…meaning so-called Federal so-called Constitutional literalists are big hypocrites for supporting the notion at all.) A Federal judge could compel testimony on these so-called privileged conversations at any time and no one in the legal world would blink. They might appeal it to delay having to give compelled testimony but eventually, it’s very likely that testimony will be required, particularly in the case of the J6 insurrection.
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I expect the DP controlled Congress will be looking into it for as long as they can. Hopefully that’s longer than three more months though. It’s going to take longer than that to get to the bottom of what exactly happened here (and likely even longer still to pass laws that up the penalty for this sort of bureaucratic malfeasance.)
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Twitler and his Twisslering lawyers have to assert the privilege in Federal court. If they don’t then there is no privilege. The privilege does not apply generally to all conversations. They’ll have to assert privilege to specific instances to make it even stick. A federal judge or appeals courts and/or the Supreme Court will then decide if an specific conversation is covered on a case-by-case basis. In general, in this scandal, the assertion of the privilege is a delaying tactic, nothing more.
Conversations by Twitler in which support for the insurrection and sedition were discussed will come out, much as we saw ex-General Flynn invoking the 5th to questions around this insurrection and sedition so will Twitler and other Twisslerings have to make similar invocations. For now, they hide behind the privilege to avoid having to invoke the 5th.
Note that the Congress and the DOJ can seek grants of immunity where the 5th has been invoked to further the investigation into what happened. For all we know, DOJ has already secretly granted such immunity to one or more witnesses. A federal judge is required to sign off on the grant of immunity for compelled testimony.
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I note as an aside that if the Congress had obtained walled-off limited grants of immunity for testimony already that that would explain their reluctance to turn over certain testimony to DOJ, as such testimony might taint DOJ’s own investigations and on-going or later prosecutions. In the past, public testimony by those given immunity for testimony before the Congress has caused headaches down the line for holding illegal actors to legal consequences for their actions. I doubt the J6 Committee has gotten as far as requesting such grants but it is possible that such applications for or grants of have already occurred in secret.
Paging John Dean…
…John Dean…
…You’re wanted on the white courtesy phone…
Why hasn’t anyone booked him on their shows?
He’s 99.9% snark. Once a month or so, he’s even funny.
That’s charitable.
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Patsy Baloney is on an air mattress in an ocean of Trump malfeasance. He won’t make waves. He mostly cooperated with the J6SC and will continue to avoid trouble with the DOJ.
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The difference?
It’s called the cost of doing business.
War is hell, but the cost of doing business will be the undoing of civilization, unless…
3,000 deaths per week in this country currently. People think it’s gone, no masks, and school starts soon. A complete public health failure because of him and purposely driven misinformation by numerous bad actors.
He’s frequently been on both MSNBC and CNN since the J6 started their teevee shows.
And imagine how much of the bad stuff they already know, which now sits like unexploded IEDs ready to blow Cipollone out of the water if he starts lying about stuff they already know - he’s potentially in very deep doodoo…
And no, I don’t see how claiming executive privilege is going to help him here - it doesn’t cover any of the illegal stuff, and Biden is likely to waive it for the scurrilous stuff anyways. Poor, poor Patsy… 
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Well, he is the Patsy dishing out the Baloney…
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And funnily enough, a recent New Yorker cartoon managed to capture the current situation perfectly…
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