Amid headlines of failing health conditions — inadequate food and water — on the USS Lincoln, President Trump’s continued circumvention of Congress and the law while he erects monuments to himself, and his announcement that he will sell early access to his Truth Social Posts for $100,000 per month, which is a likely means of knowing how the president will manipulate the markets, comes the news of the Trump Administration’s latest maneuver to further undermine the rule of law and evade checks, balances and accountability.
Just 24 hours after being sworn in as U. S. Attorney General, Todd Blanche issued a memo that dramatically expands executive privilege, the purported authority, as he described it, of the president “to withhold certain sensitive information for the public good.” According to Blanche, the president may now “shield presidential communications with private advisers so long as communications relate to presidential decision making.” And, the memo says, a “private adviser is anyone the President consults with outside the Executive Branch.” This expansion of the presidential power of secrecy is executive privilege on steroids and it effectively builds a moat around the White House. Trump, alone, will decide what information about his acts, decisions and conversations with anyone, anywhere, anytime will be shared with Congress and the American people. A moat, indeed. So much for transparency, executive accountability and the quaint idea that the president serves the people.
This authoritarian curtain, a function of various motives, will be brought center stage soon and, certainly, if Democrats capture control of one or both houses of Congress and exercise legislative oversight and investigative powers, armed with subpoenas to the president while probing Trump’s numerous illegal, unconstitutional and corrupt actions since assuming office for a second term. Trump will surely balk at surrendering anything — memos, emails, letters and briefs — and will denominate as “advisers,” anyone with whom he conversed as pursuant to “presidential decision making.” This assertion of unfettered power will render the president unaccountable to the rule of law and the American people. Of course, lawsuits will be brought by Congress, but Trump’s stonewalling, bulked by a Department of Justice that exhibits no independence from the president, will stymie investigations and frustrate resort to the judiciary.
Blanche’s perversion of executive privilege is an accelerant for the fire that is consuming the rule of law in America. Lost in the mists of time is the fact that the framers of the Constitution, in Article 1, Section 5, granted to Congress, not the president, the sole authority to withhold sensitive information from the American people by refusing to publish matters in the Congressional Record.
The rationale was clear: The president might have a self-interest in withholding information from the public and Congress, as an institution, would be a better judge of what could be shared with the citizenry. Blanche’s expansion of executive privilege also flies in the face of his vow to Senate Republicans during his confirmation hearings that he would reduce, not enlarge, the scope of executive immunity.
For the Originalists among you, the concept of executive privilege is not mentioned in the text of the Constitution. It was never raised, discussed or debated in the Constitutional Convention. It was not the subject of consideration in the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers or any of the writings contemporaneous with the framing of the Constitution. All for good reason. If the framers had conferred upon the president the authority to withhold information from Congress, they would have granted to the president more power than that enjoyed by the king of England, who had a statutory duty to share all information with Parliament, whether requested or not. Imagine the outrage in the United States in 1787, if Americans, who had fought a war with England to free themselves of centralized executive power, had learned that the framers had created an embryonic monarchy at home.
President Eisenhower was the first to claim — on narrow grounds — the power of executive privilege, and Americans welcomed his assertion of power as a rebuff of the reviled Sen. Joseph McCarthy. But national applause is not a substitute for constitutional authority. The genie was out of the bottle. Subsequent presidents have invoked the privilege, often for less than meritorious reasons, and the court, mistakenly, has blessed a “limited privilege.” Trump has eviscerated the boundaries, and we can see where the nation is headed.
David Adler, Ph.D., is president of Alturas Institute, which advances the Constitution, civic education and equal protection.
Your comment has been submitted.
Reported
There was a problem reporting this.
Log In
We welcome comments, however there are some guidelines:
Keep it Clean: Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexual language. Don't Threaten: Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful: Don't lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice: No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading. Be Proactive: Report abusive posts and don’t engage with trolls. Share with Us: Tell us your personal accounts and the history behind articles.
To view our latest e-Edition, click the image on the left.
Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.
We recommend switching to one of the following browsers:
Sorry, an error occurred.
Already Subscribed!
Cancel anytime
Account processing issue – the email address may already exist
Must be at least 8 characters, not contain repeating characters (e.g., 111), and not contain sequential numbers (e.g., 123).
Sign up with
Thank you .
Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.
Check your email for details.
Invalid password or account does not exist
Sign in with
Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.
An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
No promotional rates found.
Secure & Encrypted
Must be at least 8 characters, not contain repeating characters (e.g., 111), and not contain sequential numbers (e.g., 123).
Secure transaction. Secure transaction. Cancel anytime.
Thank you.
Your gift purchase was successful! Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.
A receipt was sent to your email.
Leave a Reply