Page 5 - Deliberative Process Privilege News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

By trying to find the facts involved. and when you cancel hearings, when you fail to look at facts and the evidence, it does impact on the credibility of that investigation. >> people are wondering why did those public hearings that have been announced for a while, why were they suddenly cancelled. in letters published, there secretary, the justice department wrote to the law firm rep zebti representing sally yates. let me read a couple sentences from that letter. ms. yates seeks authorization to testify about communications she and a senior department official had with the office of the couns...

Process. who is going to win this executive privilege under the second provision? >> you know it's interesting, gregg, because the president asserted deliberative process privilege, but as chairman issa has pointed out, congressman issa and the committee has pointed out it's really what easy certificating is the presidential communications privilege, direct discussions, research done for the president. that is different than what happened here. people who are lower ranking executive branch officials have privilege, but to overcome it all you have to show, not criminal activity is government mi...

And there is an allegation that if you are looking into misconduct by the agency that is asserting the privilege here, that would be misconduct by the d.o.j., that the law is pretty well settled that the privilege is at its weakest and may not apply at all. is that also correct? >> that is correct. the deliberative process privilege is a lower threshold it's a qualified privilege. government wrongdoing is one of the what is to do it. there is an open question here. is the government wrongdoing a colossal blunder of the policy or is the government wrongdoing the fact they submitted a letter in ...

Withholding. that's something issa's wanted. >> well, this whole blanket assertion of privilege that the government makes here is completely unprecedent inside this context. the deliberative process privilege protects only the deliberative materials in the communications and doesn't protect any underlying facts. so they're supposed to have done redactions and produced the nonprivileged materials already in those documents. and what the president has done here is probably without reviewing the documents at all just said, no, everything's privileged. megyn: chris, you point out in a piece that y...

At that. megyn: so, jay christian adams, welcome back to the program. i want to ask you, the doj can come out and say -- well, president obama has to assert it. that doesn't mean they had communications with president obama. they're saying we can do it as an administrative agency, we can assert this privilege even if we didn't talk to president obama, and i think we all agree that is true. they can assert this deliberative process privilege, but as shannon's pointing out, it's not an absolute privilege, it's a qualified privilege, and it is one that a court will take a very close look at and v...