Murray Waas on Rove: "Obama WH Will NOT Invoke Executive Privilege" For Rove

[kpete]

Karl Rove to Cooperate with federal grand jury probing firings of U.S. attorneys; As for Congress, that’s another story
By murrayw Tuesday February 3, 2009 1:02am

...........................

I don’t ordinarily make predictions on my blog. (Oops, there goes my invitation to appear on the McLaughlin Group!) But in this case, I think I know what is going to happen.

The Obama White House will not invoke executive privilege for the chief political advisor for a Republican President, not because of politics, but for these reasons:

1. The federal judge who has been considering the Bush White House’s executive privilege claims– an ideological conservative who was appointed by Bush– has been scathing in his criticism of the claim in this instance.

2. It would simply be bad case law to continue defending the claim of executive privilege, as Jack Balkin explains.

3. Nobody in the White House counsel’s office or DOJ will want to twist the law in any case. To consider the changes that have come to Washington, a former attorney for CREW, now works in the Obama White House Counsel’s Office. Norman Eisen who is the president’s special counsel for ethics and government reform, as a co-founder of CREW, had sued the Bush administration to recover and disclose missing White House emails. It would not seem that he is much of an advocate of radical expansions of executive privilege for presidential aides of former administrations.

And one of Jack Balkin’s former blogging partners at Balkinization now works in the Obama Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Finally, there is President Obama himself: a former constitutional law professor.

more at:
http://murraywaas.crooksandliars.com/2009/02/03/karl-rove-to-cooperate-with-federal-grand-jury-probing-firings-of-us-attorneys-congress-another-story/

[kstewart33]

1. Great post kpete. Thanks. nt

[calimary]

2. Kick! I hope this is correct.

Obama's got a fair amount of people in and around DOJ who just do not lean toward any of this. Look at Dawn Johnsen - loudly against all things torture, for example.

I still think kkkarl and his friends would look mighty becoming in orange.

[aquart]

3. It's their color. Like a terror alert.

[IDemo]

4. K & R