Sessions: I cant discuss conversations with the president. 9 legal experts: Yes, you can.

[babylonsister]

Sessions: I can’t discuss conversations with the president. 9 legal experts: Yes, you can.
Updated by Sean [e-mail]@vox.com Jun 14, 2017, 9:10am EDT


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To find out whether Sessions has a legal justification for his silence, I reached out to 10 legal experts. I asked them if Sessions’s claim that he’s protecting the president's constitutional right to executive privilege makes any sense.

All but one of the experts rejected Sessions’s argument on its face, insisting that Sessions is legally permitted to discuss conversations with the president, provided the president hasn’t yet invoked executive privilege (which he hasn’t). One expert believes there is a precedent for Sessions’s actions, but that Congress can — and should — compel him to answer their questions.

The 9 experts who rejected Sessions's "executive privilege" argument


Asha Rangappa, Associate Dean, Yale Law School

I believe Heinrich is 100% right in this case. First, executive privilege, if it even applies in this case, can only be invoked by the president, as it attaches to his office. Sessions cannot “preemptively” invoke it on the president’s behalf. Second, I’m not sure what DOJ policy has to do with this. DOJ policy is an internal executive branch regulation. It doesn’t provide a legal shield against testifying in Congress when it is conducting an investigation as part of its oversight function.

In fact, even if the president invoked executive privilege, I think it’s an open question if it would be applicable in this case because there has to be a balance in separation of powers between the president’s need to have confidential decision-making (under which firing of an executive branch officer would probably fall) and Congress’s constitutional power of inquiry through investigatory bodies. (At least one district court has said the privilege wouldn’t apply to senior advisers during a congressional investigation unless it implicated a sensitive executive function like national security or foreign policy, neither of which is involved in this case.)

Also, U.S. v. Nixon specifically noted that executive privilege doesn’t extend to communications or materials that might relate to criminal activity. Since that is also implicated in the decision to fire Comey — namely, that they were trying to obstruct justice — I think executive privilege in this context and line of questioning rests on a very weak basis.

In short, Sessions just needs to answer the damn questions.


Jed Shugerman, law professor, Fordham University

Sessions’s argument is absurd, and the reason it’s absurd is that it turns the president’s executive privilege into any executive officer’s silence. The argument goes something like this: Because a president might one day, over the next three or four years, change his mind and invoke executive privilege, I am permanently silenced by that looming privilege invocation in the future, so that I have to be permanently silenced, no matter who’s asking. There is just no legal basis for that.

Honestly, it’s a ridiculous argument, and it raises questions about Attorney General Sessions’s competence in office. His lack of preparation and his inability to put forward a coherent legal argument showed his disrespect for the process, the senate, and the office of the attorney general. He embarrassed himself by coming to this hearing totally unprepared to answer a question everyone knew he would be asked.


more...

https://www.vox.com/2017/6/14/15796078/jeff-sessions-testimony-russia-donald-trump-comey-fbi

[dalton99a]

1. "By golly, the only thing I can do as Attorney General is wipe my ass"

[gratuitous]

4. But if the President tells him he can't

JBS would happily walk around in crusty shorts all day, because he's just that loyal.

The point from the original post seems to be the point that Sen. Harris was trying to elicit from Sessions:

Harris: What is the basis for your refusal to answer the questions? Okay, it's not executive privilege, you've changed your mind there, but let that slide for now. It's a "policy" or a "principle." All right. Is that written down somewhere?

Sessions: Arp blarp, arglebargle, all mah yeahs of experience as a U.S. Attuhney. Bafflegab.

Harris: Is the policy or the principle written down somewhere? Did you read that before you appeared here today?

Sessions: I buhlieve Ah'm ovuhcome with the vapahs! Who is this woman asking so many questions? This is all happening too fast, too fast, Ah say!

McCain: I'll save you, Mr. Attorney General! [Swoops down from balcony on jungle vine, grabs up the startled leprechaun and is gone before anyone can move]

Sessions: My hero!

Burr: The Senator's time is up. Also, she's hysterical.

[Scurrilous]

2. K&R

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Jeffie is playing hide and seek with people.

He will get his ass handed to him with in weeks.

[MineralMan]

5. Sessions CHOOSES not to discuss those conversations.

He CAN discuss them, but CHOOSES not to do so.