Now we come to the crux of the matter, OLC’s claim that “Congress may not constitutionally compel the President’s senior advisers to testify about their official duties.” 5-20-19 OLC Opinion at 1. Specifically, OLC contends that Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, may not be compelled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about matters described in the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. See id. at 1-2. These include, for example, the question whether McGahn truthfully told the special counsel that President Trump directed him to fire the special counsel or whether McGahn lied about this, as Trump apparently now alleges. See Mueller Report, vol. II, at 84-87. For the reasons that follow, OLC (sometimes known as the Keeper of the Presidential Fig Leaf) is wrong.
Adam White, a keen legal observer who unaccountably agrees with OLC’s analysis, summarizes its reasoning as follows:
As OLC explained, the president’s core advisors are entitled to absolute immunity from compelled appearances before Congress; they are his alter egos, and just as Congress cannot force the president himself to testify before its committees, nor can Congress force his closest advisors to appear. Such compelled testimony would subjugate the president to Congress; it would significantly impair (if not destroy altogether) the president’s ability to receive candid advice from his closest advisors, and it would enable congressional committees to prevent the president’s advisors from actually doing their own work for the president.
In essence, OLC offers a syllogism (1) the president has absolute testimonial immunity; (2) his closest advisers are his “alter egos”; and hence (3) his advisers also have absolute immunity. As we have already seen, however, it is far from established that the president himself has absolute testimonial immunity. Moreover, there is nothing other than OLC’s say-so to support the proposition that White House aides should be considered the president’s “alter egos’ and, in any event, this assertion does little more than assume the conclusion. Saying that an aide is the president’s “alter ego” is simply another way of saying that the aide is entitled to the same immunity as the president. However, as Assistant Attorney General Rehnquist recognized in 1971, the (assumed) fact that the president enjoys an immunity “does not answer the question as to whether his immediate advisers are likewise exempt.” Rehnquist Memorandum at 3.
As it happens, since 1971 the Supreme Court has addressed this very question in a closely related context. In a 1982 opinion joined by Justice Rehnquist, the Court held that senior presidential advisers were not entitled to absolute immunity in civil actions arising out of their official activities, even though the Court held in a companion case that the president was entitled to such immunity. The Court did not dispute “the importance to the President of loyal and efficient subordinates in executing his duties of office,” but found this was simply not enough to justify extending absolute immunity to presidential aides. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 808-09 (1982); see also Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982) (holding the president is absolutely immune from civil suits arising from his official duties).
Harlow not only establishes that the president’s advisers may be sued for civil damages, but, as OLC tacitly concedes, it also demonstrates that they can be compelled to testify in judicial proceedings. It would make no sense to claim that White House aides were immune from giving testimony in civil damages actions in which they were the defendants and, in any event, in such cases they would be “compelled” to testify as a practical matter to defend their conduct. Furthermore, despite the numerous criminal investigations that have involved White House aides over the past decades (to name just a few that come to mind in addition to the Mueller probe, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater, the 1996 campaign fundraising scandal, and the Valerie Plame leak matter), as far as I know OLC has not contended that presidential advisers are immune from testifying in either grand jury proceedings or criminal prosecutions. Thus, there seems to be no serious contention that White House aides have any immunity from testifying in judicial proceedings.
Harlow would seem to be fatal to OLC’s argument. Leaving aside the difficulty of explaining why the Constitution would require that presidential advisers have immunity in congressional, but not judicial, proceedings, Harlow establishes that these advisers are not constitutionally entitled to an immunity simply because it is available to the president. This might seem like a self-evident point (it was to Rehnquist even while he still worked at OLC), but OLC’s syllogism doesn’t work once it is recognized. See Comm. on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, v. Miers, 558 F.Supp.2d 53, __ (D.D.C. 2008) (executive branch’s argument for presidential adviser immunity from compelled congressional testimony is “virtually foreclosed” by Harlow).
OLC tries to “distinguish” Harlow on the ground that congressional proceedings are fundamentally different than judicial proceedings. But this misses the main point. Harlow doesn’t preclude the possibility White House aides (or executive officials generally) will be treated differently than ordinary citizens in certain situations, but it does preclude the argument that they are entitled to special treatment just because the president is. Thus, even if we grant the proposition that the president is immune from compelled congressional testimony (which, unlike his immunity from civil actions, has not been approved by the Supreme Court or any other court), this is insufficient to establish that his aides are.
White says “[n]o court has ever held that all presidential advisors must testify when subpoenaed.” This is true in the sense that no court has ever held that all firefighters must testify when subpoenaed. But the Supreme Court has made clear that all citizens have a duty to comply with congressional subpoenas:
A subpoena has never been treated as an invitation to a game of hare and hounds, in which the witness must testify only if cornered at the end of the chase. If that were the case, then, indeed, the great power of testimonial compulsion, so necessary to the effective functioning of courts and legislatures, would be a nullity. We have often iterated the importance of this public duty, which every person within the jurisdiction of the Government is bound to perform when properly summoned.
United States v. Bryan, 339 U.S. 323, 331 (1950) (emphasis added) (upholding a contempt conviction for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena). The relevant fact, then, is that no court has ever held that presidential advisers have immunity from this “public duty,” and the only court (Judge Bates in the Miers case) to directly address the claimed immunity has roundly rejected it.
Indeed, no court has ever held that any class of citizens or officials is categorically immune from compelled congressional testimony. Witnesses can assert the Fifth Amendment in congressional proceedings, for example, but that does not excuse them from the duty of appearing to invoke the privilege in response to specific questions. Therefore, OLC carries a heavy burden to establish that senior presidential advisers are constitutionally distinct from ordinary citizens and other executive branch officials in such a way that they are entitled to this unique immunity. It must carry this burden, moreover, without the benefit of any supporting authority (other than its own prior memoranda) because, as Judge Bates points out, “[t]he Executive cannot identify a single judicial opinion that recognizes absolute immunity for senior presidential advisors in this or any other context.” Miers, 558 F.Supp.2d at __.
It is also noteworthy that despite the fact that OLC refers to “absolute immunity from compelled congressional testimony,” it acknowledges that this immunity does not extend to testimony regarding the adviser’s “private affairs.” 5-20-19 OLC Opinion at 4, 7. OLC does not elaborate on what it means by this exception (which it refers to simply by quoting an apparently unpublished 1974 memorandum by Assistant Attorney General Antonin Scalia). However, as we saw in an earlier post, in his 1971 congressional testimony, Rehnquist associated this exception with two instances (Donald Dawson in 1951 and Sherman Adams in 1958) in which senior White House officials were alleged to have misused their offices for personal gain. These are hardly “private affairs” as that term would ordinarily be understood. And regardless of what one calls it, OLC fails to explain why the Constitution permits compelled congressional testimony in this instance and not in other cases where a senior adviser has important and non-privileged information that Congress needs.
OLC’s Policy Rationales
As White notes, OLC offers three basic reasons why senior presidential aides must have testimonial immunity in congressional proceedings. Absent such immunity, OLC maintains, (1) the president would be “subjugated” to Congress; (2) the president’s ability to receive candid advice from his closest advisers would be impaired or destroyed; and (3) committees could interfere with the work that these advisers must perform for the president. Let’s take these in reverse order. Continue reading “OLC’s Fig Leaf Can’t Cover McGahn”
