Dan Bartlett and Presidential Privilege
From a TalkLeft Reader this morning:
I watched a good part of Hardball last night. I saw [blog]coverage [of it]on Atrios and Crooks and Liars regarding the segment with Jean Schmidt, which I thought deserved their focus. They were right in praising David Gregory for going after her as hard as he did.
However, they ignored something even more important where he did not do as good a job. During his interview with Dan Bartlett, Bartlett asserted that the White House would not be releasing all of Robert's writing while in the Solicitor General's office as they were covered by attorney-client privilege and the president needed to be able to rely on that advice. I shouted at Gregory to follow up, but sadly, he did not challenge Bartlett.
bq..Could you please write an entry debunking this canard? As Republicans are only too aware, Ken Starr won a ruling that said not even communications with White House Counsel are not privileged - the White House Counsel works for the American People and not the president. As long as the president was not receiving private legal advice, it is not privileged. (I also wonder if there is a successor privilege issue as Roberts provided the advice to Ronald Reagan, and not to our current president.)
This hypocrisy and the fact that the White House nonchalantly believes it can successfully peddle it are mind-numbing. We need to call them out on it each and every time.
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