President Obama asserted Executive Privilege today while trying to stop Congress from forcing documents in the files of the Department of Justice from being disclosed to Congress. I went back and looked at the scope of Executive Privilege. Here is the description which arose out of Bill Clinton's attempts to use Executive Privilege to hide the details regarding Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and the others.
Although the Court must presume that presidential communications are privileged, the scope of the privilege is limited to "communications authored or solicited and received by those members of an immediate White House adviser's staff who have broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the advice to be given to the President on the particular matter to which the communications relate." In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 752. In other words, the President does not have to participate personally in the communication in order for it to be privileged.
But there is also no doubt that the communications in question have to be either (1)to or from the president, or (2) to or from an immediate White House adviser or THERE IS NO PRIVILEGE!
The communications sought by Congress cannot be privileged. They cannot be to or from president Obama. He has told us all that he never heard of Fast and Furious until after the stories about it broke on television. All of the administration witnesses said that the president was uninvolved in any way. So could these communications be with an immediate White House adviser? Normally, a cabinet secretary does not fall within the scope of that category. Nevertheless, let's assume that Eric Holder is such an adviser. Clearly, he is the only one at DOJ who could fit that description. But Eric Holder has told Congress under oath that he had no role in Fast and Furious. He told Congress under oath that he first heard about the operation in April of 2011 which is two months after most of the documents sought by Congress were written. In other words, Holder himself has testified that these documents cannot be to or from him. As a result, the documents cannot be subject to Executive Privilege.
So there you have it. Obama is using his office to assert a claim that cannot be correct. Obama is arguing that there is an executive privilege attached to documents that cannot be privileged. Because he is president, he can do this with the result that it will now take until after the election for the truth about Fast and Furious to come out.
But the real truth about Obama has come out again today. This is a man who is only concerned about his own re-election. He does not care about the Constitution; he made that clear with his immigration order on Friday. He does not care about honesty; he made that clear with his incessant lies like the one in which he claims to have raised spending less than any other modern president. He does not care about the family of the dead border guard who was killed with the guns of Fast and Furious. He made that clear today. Indeed, Obama does not care about the American people. He made that clear again today. He is willing to subvert the Constitution, the rule of law, the prestige of the presidency and the faith that ordinary Americans place in their government all in the name of his re-election effort.
I say it often, but rarely with so much feeling:
OBAMA HAS GOT TO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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