by Editorial Board of The New York Sun
The Democrats who are suing to break President Trump’s executive privilege in respect of January 6 might want to be careful for what they wish. The same constitutional lee in which Mr.Trump is trying to shelter might someday — even as early as 2023 — be invoked by a Democratic president, like, say, one Joseph Biden. The burden for the House Democrats is to avoid, in their zeal to get Mr. Trump, degrading the presidency itself.
On Tuesday, the Democrats of the House committee investigating the events of January 6 won a victory in federal court for the District of Columbia. “Presidential conversations are presumptively privileged, but the privilege is not absolute,” Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ruled. “The presumption can be overcome by an appropriate showing of public need by the judicial or legislative branch.”
Her ruling rests in part on the precedent set by the Watergate-era case of U.S. v. Richard Milhous Nixon, when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the 37th president could not keep private certain of his White House Tapes. It strikes us that these cases lack for analogousness. It was not Congress demanding the tapes. It was not “oversight.” That case was before a district judge, The Honorable Maximum John Sirica, who ordered the tapes placed in the custody of the Court.
Judge Chutkan is not sitting on a criminal case. She has no desire to inspect the Trump material demanded by the cantankerous congresspersons. “The court,” she meekly advises, “is not best situated to determine executive branch interests, and declines to intrude upon the executive function in this manner.” Then again, too, neither is Congress the place to determine the executive branch’s interests.
No, the person best suited to determine that is the…
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