Squishy Executive Privilege News Today

Work their way down. and youll see today especially republican members on the other side try to frustrate that and throw people off their rhythm. i can promise you the members have done their homework, even if the witness in front of them havent. they know his previous statements on this. theyll know the department of justice regulations. and a lot of times theyll have prepared answers or statements. you saw that from nadler today. once he got the gist of the cd that whitaker was not going to an...

Let me say this. your iteration of the departments long-standing policy appears designed to delay answering these questions as long as possible. i find that unacceptable. i understand the role of executive privilege and respect the value in our system of governance. however, congress is a co-equal branch of government. we have a responsibility to conduct oversight. this is a responsibility we take very seriously. ive repeatedly tried to work with your office first in delaying the hearing until f...

The departments failure to do its due diligence here to me is deeply troubling. i do not believe that issuing subpoena here would correct the problem, but im going to give you the opportunity to rectify the situation. after todays hearing we will attempt to reach an accommodation to get answers to the questions. as part of that process i ask for your commitment to return for a deposition in the coming weeks under oath with an understanding that the transcript will be released to the public as so...

As a society we want protected. its not going to get adjudic e adjudicated in the hearing room. its not going to be resolved today. t going to the congress wont get the answers it wants from whitaker. whitaker will fall back on executive privilege claims. a court will have to resolve it. that will take a long time. this is not the first time it happened. it happens with democrats in the white house and republicans in congress. it happens with republicans in the white house and democrats in congr...

Pleases. hes there to answer the questions to the extent he can without it violating a legitimate privilege or an ongoing investigation. and to -- its sort of impertinent to ask the questioner to lay out the factual basis for the questions. but let me just say, chris, my expectations were low going into this, that we were going to get much of substance out of acting attorney general whitaker. now my expectations have shifted and i only hope he doesnt continue to say things that would be demeanin...

Subpoena. democrats wanted to make sure that whitaker would show up after that delay. secondarily that they would be able to force him to actually answer questions if he tried to assert this squishy executive privilege or if he chose to simply not answer some of their more pointed questions. so the committee authorized a subpoena, essentially giving the chairman the power to use it if he so chose and the department of justice did not like that. they pushed back and said that whitaker would not a...

Its the presidents to invoke. if you were my client and i was your attorney, you, the client own the privilege. you invoke it, not me. you invoke it. heres the presidents privilege. hes the chief executive. its for him to invoke. what were hear right now is not quite an invocation of the privilege. its squishy. >> yeah. and where its not squishy nick, is in the politics of this. sara sanders immediately saying the fact the chairman tries to disclose private conversations he knows are protected b...

Then they went straight to the floor for a vote so weve not seen senators come back out. its worth pointing out in the senate and in the house the lawmakers in the relevant committees here have gotten their own opportunities to interview both comey and sessions about these questions and gotten very different sets of answers and reactions in the past. remember, that comey interview over the summer was the blockbuster interview of the senate intelligence committee investigation into russia interfe...