How Should the January 6 Committee Respond to Trump’s Lawsuit?

On Friday, November 11, former President Trump filed suit against the January 6 committee to prevent enforcement of the subpoena for documents and testimony the committee issued to him on October 21. The complaint asserts that as a former president Trump is absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony (at least outside the realm of impeachment). In addition, it alleges that the subpoena is invalid for a number of reasons, including that it was not issued for a valid legislative purpose, that it fails the heightened standard of scrutiny established by the Supreme Court for subpoenas of presidential information, and that the January 6 committee lacked authority to issue subpoenas because it was improperly constituted.

All of these claims, in my view, should lose, and I think they all probably would if the litigation ever resulted in a final judgment on the merits. However, as Trump’s lawyers well understand, there is very little chance of that happening before the January 6 committee expires at the end of this Congress, which will most likely moot the case. For Trump’s legal team, the advantage of this lawsuit is that it will buy time and possibly forestall a contempt vote in the House. Continue reading “How Should the January 6 Committee Respond to Trump’s Lawsuit?”

Some Thoughts on the January 6 Committee Subpoena to Former President Trump

As you may have heard, the January 6 select committee has adopted a resolution authorizing its chair to issue a subpoena for documents and testimony under oath to former President Donald Trump. This action raises some legal, political and practical issues, which are considered below.

Is a former president immune from a congressional subpoena? The answer to this question is pretty clearly no. It has been well-established since Watergate that even sitting presidents are subject to judicial subpoena and, as the D.C. Circuit recently observed, its own precedent from that era “strongly implies that [sitting] Presidents enjoy no blanket immunity from congressional subpoenas.” Trump v. Mazars U.S., LLP, 940 F.3d 710, 722 (D.C. Cir. 2019), rev’d and remanded on other grounds, 140 S.Ct. 2019 (2020). It is therefore very unlikely that former presidents would be found to enjoy such blanket immunity.

Is a former president absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony about his official activities? For reasons I have discussed before, the answer to this question should be no, although I acknowledge there are good reasons why Congress should be (and historically has been) reluctant to compel the appearance of former presidents except in extraordinary circumstances. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on the January 6 Committee Subpoena to Former President Trump”

Who Loves Testimonial Immunity? Just Us.

The Department of Justice, at the invitation of presiding judge Carl Nichols, has filed a statement of its views regarding whether former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is entitled to assert testimonial immunity in response to a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Because the DOJ brief ultimately concludes that Meadows must provide testimony in this instance, its reasoning may escape serious scrutiny in most quarters. But not on this blog.

So let us count the ways DOJ is full of crap.

  1. DOJ’s fundamental position on testimonial immunity has not changed, and it is still supported by nothing more than ipse dixit.  DOJ reiterates “the Executive Branch’s longstanding position” that “a sitting President’s immediate advisers—current and former—cannot be compelled to testify before Congress about their official duties.” DOJ Br. at 7. As it routinely does, DOJ stresses that its position has been consistent over many years and through administrations of both parties, thus proving self-interestedness is a bipartisan phenomenon and little else.

To support this (longstanding- did I mention that?) position, DOJ offers a cursory regurgitation of arguments/assertions it has made many times before: (1) immunity is needed to protect the president’s independence and autonomy; (2) the president’s advisers should not have to appear because their testimony would largely be protected by executive privilege anyway; and (3) without immunity the president’s advisers would be subject to congressional harassment and distraction from their important duties. DOJ Br. at 5-7.

To be sure, DOJ acknowledges that “some judges” have disagreed with its view, citing in a footnote four opinions, two by judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and two by judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. See DOJ Br. at 7 & n. 4. Left unmentioned is the fact that exactly zero judges have agreed with DOJ’s position or even expressed the slightest interest in adopting it.

More importantly, DOJ makes no effort whatsoever to respond to the judicial criticisms of its position, which were first voiced by Judge Bates in 2008 litigation involving Harriet Miers. See Comm. on the Judiciary v. Miers, 558 F.Supp.2d 53, 100-06 (D.D.C. 2008). Instead, it simply says that it will adhere to its position unless the D.C. Circuit and/or the Supreme Court definitively reject it. DOJ Br. at 7.

This stance is particularly remarkable because another judge called out DOJ for precisely the same obstinacy in 2019:

DOJ . . . assert[s] that Miers was wrongly decided . . . [and] has emphasized that Miers’s sphere of influence is exceedingly limited. The thrust of the latter contention is that Miers is only one opinion . . . and implicitly, that the law is not established by the word of a single district court judge. On the other hand, says DOJ, scores of OLC attorneys have considered this issue over the past five decades, and in a series of opinions, OLC has carefully concluded that senior-level presidential aides do enjoy absolute testimonial immunity. . . . DOJ suggests that, in the absence of a groundswell of judges rejecting the concept, this Court should not readily find that the law is what Miers concluded.

Comm. on the Judiciary v. McGahn, 415 F.Supp.3d 148, 203 (D.D.C. 2019). Instead of confronting the analysis in Miers directly or giving the court “any principled reason to interpret the law in a different fashion than Judge Bates did,” the judge noted, DOJ simply dismissed his ruling “before proceeding to draw solely from OLC opinions to support the argument that senior-level presidential aides have absolute testimonial immunity.” Id.

The judge in question, of course, was none other than Ketanji Brown Jackson, who recently became the first (and so far only) Supreme Court appointment of the current occupant of the White House. Given that the McGahn opinion was Jackson’s most important and well-known opinion prior to her Supreme Court nomination, one might have expected DOJ to at least acknowledge her harsh criticism of its testimonial immunity theory. One would be wrong.

Judge Jackson went far beyond merely disagreeing with DOJ on the issue of testimonial immunity. She agreed with Judge Bates that DOJ’s legal position “is all but foreclosed by the binding case law Miers cites,” and she dissected at length “the logical flaws in DOJ’s legal analysis.” McGahn, 415 F.Supp.3d at 202. The judge found that “absolute testimonial immunity for senior-level White House aides seems to be a fiction that has been fastidiously maintained over the course of time through the force of sheer repetition in OLC opinions, and through accommodations that have permitted its proponents to avoid having the proposition tested in the crucible of litigation.” Id. at 214. DOJ’s contention “simply has no basis in law,” its argument “truly makes no sense,” and its position is ultimately based on nothing more than “ipse dixit.” Id. at 206-07, 212 & 214.

In short, Jackson makes clear that she does not view this as a close legal question about which reasonable minds can disagree. Either her McGahn opinion was overwrought and hyperbolic, or DOJ’s testimonial immunity theory is utterly without merit. There is no middle ground.

Maybe someone should ask President Biden which it is. Continue reading “Who Loves Testimonial Immunity? Just Us.”

A Former President’s Authority to Assert Executive Privilege is Incompatible with Executive Branch Doctrine

Last week the Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State held a programentitled “Congress’s Interbranch Role: The Executive, the Court, and Dobbs.” The first panel focused on conflicts between Congress and the executive, particularly disputes over congressional access to information and executive privilege. The panel, consisting of three DOJ/OLC veterans (Professor Josh Chafetz, who was supposed to represent the congressional perspective on these issues, was unfortunately unable to make it), provided an excellent if somewhat executive-tilting overview of the issues in such disputes.

What struck me in listening was the divergence between the principles underlying standard executive branch doctrine on congressional oversight and the theory that a former president may assert executive privilege. Because the panel did not discuss executive privilege as it relates to former presidents, it is worth expounding on that divergence here.

As explained by Will Levi, who was chief of staff to Attorney General Barr in the Trump administration, the executive branch views executive privilege as consisting of four components: (1) presidential communications- communications between the president and senior staff, as well as communications between senior staff and subordinate officials (or even private citizens!) for purposes of formulating advice to the president; (2) deliberative process- predecisional communications in the departments and agencies or other lower levels of the executive branch; (3) law enforcement information (which often arises in the context of attempts to obtain access to investigative or open case files); and (4) state secrets- information related to national security and foreign policy. Levi noted that the presidential communications and deliberative process privileges were qualified privileges that could be overcome by a sufficient congressional showing of need, but he maintained that the law enforcement and state secrets privileges were “more absolute.”

Continue reading “A Former President’s Authority to Assert Executive Privilege is Incompatible with Executive Branch Doctrine”

Checking the Office of Legal Counsel

As discussed in this Lawfare article by William Ford of Protect Democracy, the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has asked GAO to study the feasibility of establishing a Congressional Office of Legal Counsel (COLC) to act as a congressional analogue to the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Department of Justice. The idea would be that COLC could issue opinions on controversial separation-of-powers subjects reflecting the views and perspectives of the legislative branch and thereby function as a counterweight to OLC’s invariably pro-executive positions.

The Lawfare article thoughtfully describes the pros and cons of establishing a COLC. I am skeptical of the idea myself, but I look forward to GAO’s analysis of the issue. In the meantime, there are steps that can be taken to level the playing field between Congress and the executive branch in terms of constitutional analysis.

For example, in recent testimony for the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, I proposed one small step. The House Counsel’s website could be significantly upgraded to provide more information about its legal functions, including “non-privileged information about its legal advice and representation, including court filings, legal opinions and select explanatory or historical documents that would shed light on its operations and the legal views of the House.” This would provide some modest counterbalance to OLC, which maintains an extensive (though selective) database of its opinions on its website.

Another check on OLC would be to obtain more transparency with respect to some of its most controversial opinions. For example, I have a FOIA request to OLC which seeks information about the January 19, 2020 opinion that it submitted in the first Trump impeachment trial. Specifically, I want to find out if the legal advice that it claimed to have given the administration in October 2019 was before or after the October 8, 2019 letter in which White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told the House it would not comply with any subpoenas relating to its investigation of the former president’s efforts to withhold military aid from Ukraine. So far I have not gotten much (a shocker, I know), but still I persist.

There are many other ideas for reining in executive constitutional overreach. In his recent book The Living Presidency, Professor Sai Prakash has suggestions ranging from defunding the White House Counsel and OLC (p. 255) to having Congress issue its own declarations on controverted constitutional issues (p. 265). Similarly, Professor Emily Berman, in Weaponizing the Office of Legal Counsel proposes a number of reforms, including requiring OLC to include “dissenting opinions” as part of the opinion-writing process and increasing the use of details to Congress to give executive branch lawyers from OLC and elsewhere a better sense of the congressional perspective on disputed constitutional matters.

Thus, there is no shortage of ideas for leveling the legal playing field between Congress and the executive branch. Getting Congress to pay attention to these issues when they are not in the headlines is, however, another matter.

Two Lees, One Jackson, and Some Stonewalling

During the confirmation hearings for Judge (soon to be Justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson, she answered written questions for the record from a number of senators, including Senator Mike Lee. One of Senator Lee’s questions (hat tip: Ira Goldman) struck me as odd:

In Committee on the Judiciary v. McGahn, you took an extremely broad view of standing that all but ignored the previous elements of standing that you clung to in Federal Forest Resource Coalition (individualized injury). Setting aside the merits of the underlying controversy, your opinion never once mentions the phrase “political question.” Isn’t a case where the legislative branch is suing the executive branch a quintessential political question?

One problem with this question is that it was based on a false premise—as she pointed out in her answer, Jackson’s opinion in McGahn did in fact (more than once) use the phrase “political question” and it did so in the context of explaining why the political question doctrine was inapplicable to the case before her.  See, e.g., Comm. on the Judiciary v. McGahn, 415 F. Supp.3d 148, 178 (D.D.C. 2019) (“[T]he Supreme Court has specifically confirmed that not all legal claims that impact the political branches are properly deemed non-justiciable political questions.”).

To be sure, Jackson’s discussion of this issue was somewhat in passing. Her primary point was that the Justice Department’s legal arguments on standing and separation of powers sounded like attempts to evoke the political question doctrine without grappling with well-established limits on that doctrine. See id. at 177-78. But because the Justice Department (representing McGahn) did not actually assert that the political question doctrine applied, the judge presumably thought it unnecessary to discuss the doctrine in depth. Perhaps Lee should ask the Justice Department why it did not think McGahn presented a “quintessential political question.”

I think I can save him the trouble, though. There was a time when legal scholars (to the extent they thought about the issue) very likely would have agreed with the sentiment expressed in Lee’s question. As one noted constitutional expert wrote long ago: “In 1958, when the reach of the political question doctrine was far broader than it is today, no lesser an authority than Judge Learned Hand expressed the view that such a dispute [over a congressional subpoena] between two branches of government was a clear example of a nonjusticiable constitutional question.” Rex E. Lee, Executive Privilege, Congressional Subpoena Power, and Judicial Review: Three Branches, Three Powers, and Some Relationships, 1978 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 231, 266 (1978). For the last 60 years, though, the law has rejected such a broad view of political questions. Continue reading “Two Lees, One Jackson, and Some Stonewalling”

More on Bannon and OLC

In connection with my last post, I want to elaborate on Steve Bannon’s advice of counsel defense. The essence of this defense is that legal advice from his counsel that he was not obligated to comply with the select committee’s subpoena negated the “willfulness” required to violate the contempt of Congress statute (2 U.S.C. §192). Leaving aside the question whether this is a valid legal defense (spoiler alert: it is not), Bannon claims that this defense is bolstered by Office of Legal Counsel opinions which he interprets to excuse him from compliance with the select committee’s subpoena. For example, in his discovery motion, Bannon states “[Bannon’s lawyer] consistently advised the Government that Mr. Bannon was acting in accordance with legal opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, which analyzed the issues under analogous circumstances.”

The significance of the OLC opinions to the purported defense is unclear. One possibility is that Bannon was directly relying on the OLC opinions themselves, rather than simply on his lawyer’s interpretation of them. Another possibility is that the OLC opinions are cited to bolster the reasonableness of the legal advice the lawyer (Robert Costello) provided his client.

Bannon may also be trying to advance something of a slippery slope argument. If he cannot rely directly or indirectly on OLC opinions, then what of executive officials who receive an OLC opinion that specifically advises they need not comply with a congressional subpoena? This is the scenario that Judge Nichols was apparently concerned about when he posed a hypothetical in which Ron Klain refuses to testify based on OLC advice that he has absolute immunity from compelled congressional testimony. In this situation, Nichols asked, could DOJ advise Klain he is immune and then turn around and prosecute him for defying the congressional subpoena?

Continue reading “More on Bannon and OLC”

Should Judge Nichols Recuse Himself in the Bannon Case?

Many moons ago the Justice Department first presented in court its legal theory that senior White House aides are absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony with regard to their official duties. Although the DOJ attorney who argued the case did a pretty good job, he was unsuccessful in persuading the district court, which rejected the theory in no uncertain terms. See Comm. on the Judiciary v. Miers, 558 F. Supp.2d 53, 99 (D.D.C. 2008) (Bates, J.) (“[T]he asserted absolute immunity claim here is entirely unsupported by existing case law.”). More than a decade later, another district judge, who is currently nominated to sit on the Supreme Court, strongly agreed, finding that “the Miers court rightly determined not only that the principle of absolute testimonial immunity for senior-level presidential aides has no foundation in law, but also that such a proposition conflicts with key tenets of our constitutional order.” Comm. on the Judiciary v. McGahn, 415 F. Supp. 3d 148, 202-03 (D.D.C. 2019) (Ketanji Brown Jackson, J.). Although neither Miers nor McGahn resulted in an appellate decision on the merits, two D.C. Circuit judges wrote opinions strongly questioning or rejecting outright the absolute immunity theory, while not a single judge has expressed any degree of support for it. See Comm. on the Judiciary v. McGahn, 973 F.3d 121, 131 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (Rogers, J., dissenting) (McGahn’s claim of testimonial immunity is foreclosed by precedent); Comm. on the Judiciary v. McGahn, 951 F.3d 510, 536-40 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (Henderson, J., concurring) (explaining at some length why McGahn’s claim of immunity rests on a “shaky foundation”).

As fate and the random assignment system would have it, the DOJ attorney from the Miers case, Carl Nichols, is now himself a federal judge presiding over two high profile cases in which testimonial immunity may be an issue. Both cases arise out of the January 6 select committee investigation. The first is the prosecution of Steve Bannon for refusing to comply with the select committee’s subpoena for documents and testimony. The second is a lawsuit filed by Mark Meadows against the select committee seeking to prohibit the enforcement of subpoenas issued to him and his telecommunications provider. Among the grounds asserted by Meadows for invalidating the testimonial aspects of the subpoena directed at him was that it “contravene[d] Mr. Meadows’ testimonial immunity as a senior executive official.” Meadows Complaint ¶ 153.

Back in November a Politico article by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein discussed whether Judge Nichols should recuse himself from the Bannon case (the Meadows lawsuit had not yet been filed) due to his participation in Miers.  According to former House Counsel Irv Nathan, who argued Miers for the House and is quoted in the piece, Nichols should have considered recusing himself because of the similarity of the issues in the two cases. Nathan explained that in Miers Nichols had “argued that a witness, a private citizen (a former Executive Branch official) following the direction of a President, need not comply with a Congressional subpoena and could refuse even to show up, produce any documents or even itemize the documents alleged to be privileged.” This in his view would undermine the judge’s appearance of impartiality in presiding over the Bannon trial.

Continue reading “Should Judge Nichols Recuse Himself in the Bannon Case?”

The Berman Firing, Congressional Oversight, and (Lack of) Presidential Accountability for the Exercise of the Removal Power

I don’t envy Andrew McCarthy, the National Review contributing editor who writes about legal affairs. McCarthy is a smart and experienced lawyer who clearly thinks of himself as intellectually honest. But he also seems to conceive his job as explaining the constitutional operation of our government while minimizing references to the president’s massive unfitness for office. This makes intellectual honesty challenging. It’s a bit like submitting a detailed report on the crash of a passenger jet and only casually mentioning that the pilot was a kangaroo.

A case in point is McCarthy’s take on the dismissal of Geoffrey Berman, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (USA-SDNY). In case you had not heard, late Friday, June 19, the Justice Department issued a press release with three announcements by Attorney General Bill Barr: (1) President Trump “intends to nominate” Jay Clayton (currently the SEC chairman) as the permanent USA-SDNY; (2) Trump “has appointed” Craig Carpenito (currently the interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey) to be the “acting” USA-SDNY effective July 3; and (3) Berman would “stepping down” from his position as the interim USA-SDNY.

Berman responded immediately by denying that he was stepping down and implying that he needed to stay on to protect the integrity of the SDNY’s investigations (which include politically sensitive investigations that could implicate the president’s personal or political interests). The next day, June 20, Barr wrote to Berman advising him that “[b]ecause you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so.”

Noticeably absent from Barr’s letter was any claim that the president had asked for Berman’s resignation or had been involved at all prior to that day. Also unmentioned was any reference to the president’s alleged “appointment” of Carpenito that DOJ had announced the day before. Instead, Barr stated that by “operation of law” Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, would become acting USA-SDNY, noting that “I anticipate that she will serve in that capacity until a permanent successor is in place.” The assurance regarding Strauss’s tenure was reportedly given as a concession for Berman to agree to leave quietly.

To add to the chaos, when asked about Berman’s departure, Trump told the press that he was “not involved.” The White House later “clarified” this statement to acknowledge that Trump had “signed off” on Barr’s recommendation that Berman be terminated. Whether this sign off occurred only after Berman refused to leave is unclear. There has been no other official or unofficial indication that Trump was involved in either Berman’s departure or the botched attempt to appoint Carpenito.

In two columns (June 20 and June 23), McCarthy defends the Trump administration against critics who conceive Berman’s firing to be part of an effort by the president and the attorney general to obstruct justice by derailing particular investigations that threaten Trump in some way. About this he is probably right, but he glosses over the incompetence, dysfunction and lack of accountability that have been so typical of this administration’s “personnel” actions. Continue reading “The Berman Firing, Congressional Oversight, and (Lack of) Presidential Accountability for the Exercise of the Removal Power”