Page 5 - Executive Privilege Argument News Today

To delay this, and it ultimately they will lose. >> cynthia, lets talk about his conversations that pence had with people outside the white house. some of those conversations he put into a book. so lets talk about those conversations because he included in his buck conversations with donald trump in connection with the insurrection, and efforts dealing with a 2020 election. that helped the government, right? it actually helped bolsters the governments argument that these communications are not c...

Volunteer interview, before there was a special counsel. clearly things escalated to where he felt the need to subpoena them. and im told that pences team found out on tuesday that this was coming. >> so elliot, is he going to talk? what are the limitations. >> let me tell you what mike pence cannot do here. he cannot ignore the subpoena and hope it goes away like we saw a lot of people do with the january 6th subpoena. one, he can testify. he can go in front of the grand jury, get under oath an...

Justice department investigators think that could actually potentially help them, because it gets into the dynamic of he goes into the room and can answer some questions on january 6th because he talked about it in his book. >> he wasnt exactly forth come manage the book. he was sort of glossed over some things. >> he did talk about conversations where he said trump told him he was praying for him, things like that. i do think there is some gray area there. i dont know how theyre going to naviga...

Im told that pence found out on tuesday that this was coming. >> so, elliott, is he going to talk? what are the limitations? >> let me tell you first about what he cannot do. here he cannot just ignore the subpoena, hope it goes away like we saw a lot of people do on january six subpoena. here is what his options are. one, he can testify, go in front of the rancher, eco under oath, and answer questions. to, he can continue negotiating -- but sometimes, serving the subpoena as a way of expediting...

Branch. but the doj is part of the executive branch. so that argument doesnt exist anymore. and because hes openly accused trump of having recklessly endangered not only him but his wife and daughter who were present on capitol hill that day, i think hes waived the executive privilege argument as well. i dont know how he could protect himself against a legitimately issued subpoena to testify in the criminal case. >> okay. you dont believe he can protect himself. as paula notes, its possible the ...

Jack smith. we know that before mr. smith was appointed, one of the top prosecutors on the january 6th investigation reached out to the defense side, to say that theyre going to want to question him. they have not subpoenaed him yet. and it could likely take weeks, if not more, more likely months, for pence to testify, because trump would likely try to invoke some sort of executive privilege argument, to stop trump, being unsuccessful in doing that, but we likely try to do that, to try to stop h...

Have any precedent for that happening in another case. >> if we take a step back, we should point out that the doj is appealing the special master decision. is there a scenario in which you see that potentially getting overturned? >> yes. there is. or at least limited to what the justice department really wants and thats to have the special master stay away from the classified material, and also have the special master not engage in some sort of analysis of this executive privilege argument that...

Is quite extreme and frankly pretty silly. >> more immediately, explain the purview of a special master and would it include the classified documents more than 100 found there, or just documents that trumps team would make an argument involve some kind of attorney/client privilege or does it go further? >> well, according to the judge, its going to cover both attorney/client and executive privilege. thats another reason why the executive privilege argument is kind of silly. which is to say that ...

Requested the appointment of a special master and judge can also signaled that she remained open to granting that request. she decided against issuing a final ruling on that. what do you make on her assessment that a third party would not interfere with ongoing investigations. >> she is wrong. one of the things that i tried to do so get people to understand that allowing these trump judges to burrow into our judicial system and stay there without being overtop by many more impartial appointees, ...

That they had documents that were -- you know, not only top secret but multiple levels of above that in terms of how secretive they were, that the government wanted them back, that they were working with them to try to get those documents back in the federal governments possession, and that there was no viable executive privilege argument. i really have trouble seeing why they thought the release of this was positive. it appears a misstep to release it in my opinion. >> it appears that john solo...