Zing!
And not JUST that: this is EXACTLY where the Dems should have aimed their first volley -at the ubiquitous acting for everyone Bill Burck.
Burckās list of clients INCLUDES GWB personally, the GW library, the interests of both in the GWB materials housed at NARA, McGahn, Preibus, Bannon and that barely scratches the surface. All avenues of disclosure start and end at Burck, heās often actually ACTING AS LEGAL COUNSEL at one of the end of the paper trail and acting in the same capacity for someone else at the OTHER end of the same paper trail.
Good for Sen Durbin.
If this were a real hearing, each and every claim of executive privilege would be subject to adjudication. And each claim would be backed up by a real reason. Instead, we have a lawyer who is sorta kinda acting for the ex-president who could (perhaps) assert the privilege and sorta kinda acting for others. And heās not actually saying he asserts a privilege, heās saying that the current white house and DoJ (we donāt know how DoJ got into it in the first place) are saying that they would like to assert privilege and heās ādeferring to themā on that. Oh, and the documents are of some unspecified kind that is like documents over which privilege has been asserted in the past (not saying whether successfully or not).
So Burck is essentially doing what trump administration witnesses have done many times already before congress: heās floating some random theory to which he attaches the word privilege, refusing to produce, and daring the committee to do anything about it. And for some strange reason a republican committee chair whose party benefits from that refusal is not pushing the issue.
Talk about collusion.