Tag Archives: Executive privilege

Will We Ever Get The Blindfold Back On Lady Justice?

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On Monday, Just the News posted an article with the following headline, “Biden White House facilitated DOJ’s criminal probe against Trump, scuttled privilege claims: memos.:

The article reports:

“I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall wrote Trump’s team in May.

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

Where was the FBI when it came to dealing with the illegal server and email account Hillary Clinton was using? Hillary Clinton was not President and did not have the authority to declassify documents. President Trump did have that authority at the time the documents were removed from the White House.

The article notes:

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump’s Florida compound with a court-issued search warrant.

The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May 10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers summarizing the White House’s involvement.

The article reports:

“We have requested the ability to review the documents,” Corcoran wrote National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern on April 29, copying Su on the letter. “That review is necessary in order to ascertain whether any specific document is subject to privilege. We would respectfully request that you restrict access to the documents until we have had the opportunity to review the documents and to consult with President Donald J. Trump so that he may personally make any decision to assert a claim of constitutionally based privilege.”

But a dozen days later, Wall informed Corcoran that she had the blessing of Biden to overrule those privilege claims and share all materials requested by the DOJ and FBI.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This is a breathtaking abuse of power on the part of the Biden administration.

How Much Privacy Is A President Entitled To?

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Hot Air posted an article today about the ongoing court battle regarding the Congressional subpoena of former White House Counsel Don McGahn. Counsel McGahn was summoned by the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the time he worked for President Trump.

The article reports:

Whether or not he would appear was a bone of contention for a while until a federal judge issued a dramatic proclamation on Monday, stating that “Presidents are not kings” and ordering McGahn to appear.

Well, that lasted for all of three days. By Wednesday evening, that same judge had backed down, allowing a request from the Justice Department to delay the implementation of the ruling until the appeals process has played out. Of course, this doesn’t mean McGahn (and the President) are totally off the hook, but they’ve at least bought a bit of breathing room. (Daily Mail)

The article concludes:

That doesn’t mean that the final decision on McGahn won’t cast a long shadow, however. How this plays out will have consequences for the ongoing impeachment circus. At issue here is the question of whether or not aides to the President are shielded from revealing details of private conversations they’ve had with the boss or the counsel they offered. Also, whether or not that shielding lasts indefinitely even after they’ve left their positions with the White House.

That sort of privacy has long been assumed to be part of the President’s executive privilege. But does that extend to investigations of potential criminal conduct? That’s the question that will be answered when the dust settles on McGahn’s subpoena. If he’s ordered to show up and testify, that could open the gate for numerous other Trump aides to be called in to talk about all of the Ukraine events. And that’s likely not something President Trump will want to see after we’re in the thick of the final push to next year’s election.

I guess my question is whether or not the President has the same civil rights as ordinary citizens, If you are an ordinary citizen, your conversations with your lawyer are protected by law. We saw this Constitutional principle violated when Michael Cohen’s offices were raided. Now the question is whether or not we are going to continue to violate President Trump’s Constitutional rights. All of us need to remember–if the President does not have Constitutional rights, then none of us have Constitutional rights.

Amoral vs. Immoral

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According to the ConstitutionCenter.org:

If there is a lesson in all of this it is that our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.

Somehow we have not done as good a job of keeping our republic as we might have. The recent election was a ray of hope, but we have a long way to go to get back to the government our Founding Fathers envisioned.

Fox News is reporting:

The Justice Department released nearly 65,000 pages of subpoenaed documents related to the DOJ’s botched gunrunning sting, after a federal judge overruled the Obama administration’s decision to withhold the records by invoking executive privilege. The program, which targeted Mexican gun cartels, came under scrutiny after weapons involved in the operation were connected to the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010.

“Issa and his idiot cronies never gave a damn about this when all that was happening was that thousands of Mexicans were being killed with guns from our country,” Holder wrote to members of his staff in April 2011, after Issa threatened to subpoena a Federal Firearms Licensee witness to testify on the investigation. “All they want to do — in reality — is cripple ATF and suck up to the gun lobby,” he continued, referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the branch of the Justice Department that was in charge of the gunrunning operation.

“Politics at its worst — maybe the media will get it,” Holder’s email added.

It is obvious from that statement that Eric Holder did not believe he had done anything wrong. There is no acknowledgement that running guns to Mexico might be illegal or immoral.

According to the dictionary:

amoral – lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something

immoral – not conforming to accepted standards of morality

Somehow we have morphed from the representative republic created by the U.S. Constitution to a country ruled by a bunch of elite political class who can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. If we do not remedy this situation in 2016, we will lose our republic.

Also, please note that the documents released were released on the eve of the election in the hopes that no one would pay attention to them.