Trump DOJ Memo Shielding Communications With Prez is ‘Disregarding the Law,’ Warns Ex-Prosecutor

Peter Alexander, the host of MS NOW’s State of Play, brought on network legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler on Tuesday to discuss Attorney General Todd Blanche’s just-issued memo shielding conversations with the president from Congressional oversight.

“Paul, I appreciate your being here. Help us out here — a 21-page memo just dropped a short time ago. We’re trying to pore through it right now. What are the takeaways? What are the implications of this?” Alexander began.

Butler replied, “It’s completely changing the landscape for when people testify in front of Congress about actions that the president has taken. What this new memo from the Justice Department, brand-new attorney general, says is that conversations with private citizens are immune from being learned about, from being discovered by Congress.”

“So executive privilege is the idea that when the president talks to his top aides, he or she needs a veil of confidentiality so that they can discuss things without knowing that they’ll later be in the newspapers or in front of Congress. But it’s a very limited privilege, and traditionally it only applies to the very top-level aides of the president — the attorney general, the secretary of defense. And now, according to this new memo, it could apply to anybody who President Trump feels like talking to about his decision-making,” he added.

Alexander followed up, “So how big of a departure is this from the way previous administrations have handled conversations of this kind?”

“It is huge. And if you want to talk about previous administrations, how about Trump 1.0? During the first Trump administration, its Justice Department took the position that the privilege only applies to government officials and not to private actors. It said that it didn’t even apply to Steve Bannon, who was implicated in conversations about January 6 with Trump, because he’s a private citizen,” Butler explained.

“So for clarity, does this apply retroactively? Is this only for private discussions going forward, or can this protect him for conversations he has had in the past?” pressed Alexander.

Butler replied, “Based on the reasoning of the memo, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t apply retroactively — with an important caveat: this is just an opinion from the Justice Department, not a court decision. So it’s something that would almost certainly be litigated if Congress subpoenas somebody who’s talked to the president — think somebody like Elon Musk talking outside of an official capacity. They’ll assert this privilege, or Trump will assert it, and then the courts will litigate. What I think is going on — this is a preemptive strike in case the Democrats take the House or the Senate.”

Alexander added, “I was going to say, because if the Democrats win these midterms, then the investigations — the Democrats turn up the heat on the president. This could really protect the president in terms of a lot of these conversations that happen behind closed doors.”

“Trump will assert it for almost anybody who is subpoenaed, it’s likely. So again, we’d expect that for high-level cabinet officers and other top officials. But now, because Trump is famous for talking about stuff with, you know, a whole bunch of different people, not just his top officials — so now when anybody gets subpoenaed, we could expect Trump will say they don’t have to talk to Congress, ‘I’m asserting executive privilege,’” responded Butler.

Alexander noted, “This is day one of the Todd Blanche era. This is the first legal memo that is released.”

Butler agreed, “It’s seismic. I mean, if this is day one, I hate to think what next week looks like.”

Alexander pressed, “What’s it say about the way that Todd Blanche views his responsibility and his role as attorney general?”

“It says that he’s all in favor of the president — that he is not only disregarding norms, he’s disregarding law and the way that law has been interpreted. So again, this is another example of the attorney general thinking of himself as the president’s lawyer,” Butler replied.

Alexander agreed, “I was going to say, he insisted before Congress — then he corrected himself — that he was the president’s lawyer. And he said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I serve as the attorney general.’ This seems like a pretty clear communication of how he views this responsibility.”

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

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