President Is Denied Executive Privilege

[Toots]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/starr050698.htm

President Is Denied Executive Privilege
A federal judge has ruled that President Clinton cannot use the power of his office to block prosecutors from questioning his senior aides, rejecting Clinton's assertion of executive privilege in the Monica S. Lewinsky investigation, lawyers familiar with the decision said yesterday.
<snip>
Clinton invoked both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege to prevent Starr from asking deputy counsel Bruce R. Lindsey, communications adviser Sidney Blumenthal and other top officials about conversations regarding the Lewinsky case. According to the lawyers, Johnson also dismissed the attorney-client privilege claim on the grounds that Clinton could not use government-paid White House lawyers to aid his defense in a criminal probe.

[Lex]

1. Hmmm.

"A federal judge has ruled that President Clinton cannot use the power of his office to block prosecutors from questioning his senior aides . . . "

[BulletproofLandshark]

2. Dammit!

I see what your getting at here, but that sure is a deceptive headline. Just don't expect anyone in Washington or in the media to take note of the blatant hypocrisy.

[Toots]

3. Notice the reasoning about government paid advisors

If we pay for them they must testify. According to a Federal judge anyway.

[napi21]

5. The question as I understand it is they specified "criminal" investigation.

I'm not sure if the Shrub messes are considered CRIMINAL at THIS STAGE!

[Toots]

8. At the time no criminal charges had been made, it was only an investigation

into possible criminal activity. That is what any investigation is...right? That is why there are investigations. To see if everything is on the up and up...

[Igel]

9. The problem being that it was a criminal investigation.

Now, check who is involved with criminal investigations.

A prosecutor of some sort. And a judge, who authorizes things like subpoenas.

It's still a question as to how a court will react when it's not a criminal investigation, but an oversight investigation. The law clearly doesn't protect the president from criminal investigations (when the acts aren't those of a president, but a person). But it's unclear as to whether or not Congress is only the legislative branch, or whether it's also the branch that houses the prosecutors (executive) and the one with the judges (judicial).

Hence the question.

[ljm2002]

4. Thanks much...

...now why our guys aren't clubbing the Republic bootlickers with this, is a mystery to me...

His senior aides had to testify. His friggin' lawyer had to testify (WH Counsel was deemed *not* to be his personal attorney and therefore *not* covered by attorney-client privilege).

:wtf:

[abq e streeter]

6. Why our guys aren't--------is a mystery to me

and you can just fill in the blank with almost anything.

[VP505]

7. You know how creative

the RePukes can get when it comes to something that Clinton did or didn't do, I am sure they will have 100 reasons why that doesn't apply here.