Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler is not going to let his executive privilege tussle with former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker go.
Nadler on Friday sent the White House and Attorney General Bill Barr a letter addressing claims made by the Justice Department about invoking executive privilege, a legal protection that allows conversations the President has with advisors to stay confidential. The letter is the latest missive in a weeks-long squabble over the committee’s demands that Whitaker answer certain questions about discussions he may have had with the President regarding Trump-related Department investigations.
The Democratic chairman backed down from a threat to subpoena Whitaker for not answering the questions at a hearing held earlier this month. However, in the latest letter, Nadler previewed the possibility that he would step up his efforts to subpoena the Department of Justice if there are similar standoffs over executive privilege in the future.
At the heart of the dispute is a tactic that has become common under the Trump administration: multiple officials in the last two years have, when refusing to answer questions from lawmakers, claimed were declining to do so in case the White House sought to invoke executive privilege. Without Democrats — who until this year, did not have subpoena power— forcing its hand, the administration was never forced to make such an invocation, while the questions remained unanswered.
Ahead of Whitaker’s appearance, Nadler sought to do an end-run around the evasion technique by supplying the acting attorney general with specific questions more than two weeks in advance. The chairman requested that Whitaker seek guidance from the White House as to which topic areas the President would formally invoke the privilege on.
After the Justice Department blew Nadler’s deadline on his request, Nadler got the committee’s authority to subpoena Whitaker if he dodged the questions at the hearing. Whitaker then threatened to not show up for the hearing unless Nadler backed off of the threat to subpoena him — which Nadler more or less did.
Now Nadler is asking Barr and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to answer several questions about the instructions being given to DOJ officials regarding congressional testimony and their conversations with the President. He said he planned to hold more hearings with DOJ officials and other witnesses in the “near future,” and gave the Barr and the White House a March 7 deadline to respond to Friday’s letter.
“If the Department is determined to avoid clarifying its stances regarding executive privilege absent a subpoena — and if Department officials persist in threatening at the eleventh hour to cancel their voluntary appearances when related issues arise — then the Committee may have little choice but to resort more frequently to compulsory process going forward,” Nadler wrote.
Read the full letter here.
