According to Richard Ben-Veniste, a Watergate prosecutor, the use of campaign funds “further undermines a wildly broad assertion of executive privilege.… Executive privilege is typically limited to the protection of communications involving a president’s official duties—not to those relating to personal or political campaign matters.” John Yoo, the arch conservative attorney, agreed with Ben-Veniste, telling the Post, “If he acts as a president, he gets these things we talk about—executive privilege and immunity. But if he’s acting as a candidate, he’s deprived of all of those protections.”
In a statement to the Post, Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, said the former president “is making executive privilege determinations carefully, based on the merits and in accordance with law and customs of interbranch comity,” and, it has to be said, the idea of Trump carefully determining anything based on merits and in accordance with the law is completely hilarious. Budowich also accused the Biden administration of “jeopardizing the office of the presidency by refusing to assert privilege over clearly privileged documents.”
On Monday, the January 6 committee said it is issuing subpoenas to more top Trump associates, including
2020 campaign manager William Stepien; former senior adviser to the campaign Jason Miller; John Eastman, the attorney who helped come up with Trump’s argument that the election was stolen; disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn, who wanted Trump to invoke martial law; Angela McCallum, national executive assistant to the 2020 reelection campaign; and Kerik. According to the Post, both Kerik and Eastman were “active” in the Willard hotel command center. According to CNN, Miller attended a meeting at the command center on January 5.
“In the days before the January 6th attack, the former President’s closest allies and advisors drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes,” Select Committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said in a statement on Monday. “The Select Committee needs to know every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress, what connections they had with rallies that escalated into a riot, and who paid for it all.”
Thompson added: “The Select Committee expects all witnesses to cooperate with our investigation as we work to get answers for the American people, recommend changes to our laws that will strengthen our democracy, and help ensure nothing like January 6th ever happens again.” These are the first subpoenas issued since Congress voted to hold Stephen Bannon in contempt for ignoring his.
In related news, CNN reported last month that at least five former Trump staffers have provided information to the committee investigating January 6, either because they “believe they have information worth sharing” or to preempt a…
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