Trump says executive privilege for me--but not for thee
Republicans in Congress aren’t doing much these days, opting to just let President Donald Trump do whatever he wants. That apparently frees them up to spend all their time launching investigations into the mental fitness of former President Joe Biden. And because this ongoing probe is clearly the most urgent issue facing America today, Trump has waived executive privilege for nine Biden aides. This means they will be forced to testify before Congress and answer whatever unhinged questions people like Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. James Comey come up with.
It’s all part of Trump’s ceaseless and pathetic attempts to undo the Biden presidency. So now there are four congressional investigations into whether Biden is old. The Department of Justice also launched an investigation, at Trump’s demand, to determine whether Biden signed things with an autopen because apparently, if he did, it’s all unconstitutional? It’s not at all clear what the goal is here, save for dragging Biden’s name through the mud to support whatever unhinged conspiracy theories Congress and the DOJ are pursuing.
Executive privilege ensures that presidents and their advisers can be candid in discussing issues without worrying that those communications will become public. This makes sense, because you do actually want a president and advisers who fully weigh multiple options and engage in frank debate. But it isn’t an absolute privilege. Congress has the power to seek information from the executive branch in the course of investigations, and since congressional Republicans are engaged in a full-court press into Biden’s mental state, they want his aides to appear before them and testify. As with Trump’s autopen theory, it’s not clear what this would achieve. Biden was president for four years, and the things he did during those four years cannot be magicked away by pretending that he wasn’t.
It isn’t that Trump doesn’t have the power to do this. Unlike so many other things he’s doing, presidents do possess the ability to waive an assertion of executive privilege made by a former president. It’s what Biden did when the Jan. 6 committee sought White House communications related to the insurrection, calling it a “unique and extraordinary” circumstance, which, well, yes. Learning how much the president and his advisers participated in the planning of an insurrection is sort of necessary.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/25/2330033/-Trump-says-executive-privilege-for-me-but-not-for-thee
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