Executive Privilege Case Study

In 2017, the issue of Executive Privilege is almost as contested as it was in 1973 during the Nixon investigation. President Nixon was not able to invoke Executive Privilege to protect himself from the Watergate investigation, however, the same might not be true for President Trump. President Trump is currently at the center of an investigation into potential Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential Elections. In December of 2016, the press was filled with headlines and articles reading, “American intelligence agencies have concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials” . This incident is being investigated by Special

In this case, there is no military or diplomatic secret that needs to be protected. The failure of this one prong prevents Executive Privilege from being invoked. Jeff Sessions and President Trump would be able to invoke some sort of executive privilege under the Official Conduct Privilege test. Under this test, the President and Attorney General might be able to invoke executive privilege because the two individuals may have had private conversations about the investigations and how it relates to both of their jobs. These conversations would be covered by executive privilege because they are related to their official duties. However, President Trump and Jeff Sessions would be left unable to invoke executive privilege for any conversations that they had prior to President Trump taking office. These conversations would be covered by the Unofficial Conduct test. In this case, all of the conversations that occurred prior to President Trump taking office would not be considered part of his official duties because he was not president