President Trump will not invoke executive privilege to try to stop former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before Congress this week.
“The president’s power to assert executive privilege is very well established,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday. “However, in order to facilitate a swift examination of the facts sought by the intelligence committee, President Trump will not assert executive privilege regarding James Comey’s scheduled testimony.”
Comey, who was fired by Trump last month, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. He is expected to be asked about his conversations with the president and whether Trump pressured Comey to end the FBI’s probe into any ties between his campaign and Russia.
The White House had considered invoking executive privilege to prevent Comey from testifying, on the grounds that the Executive Branch has the right to withhold information from conversations between the president and other officials. On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the possibility of Trump invoking it to stop Comey’s testimony and said the issue has “got to be reviewed.”
Monday morning, senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway suggested it was still a possibility. “The president will make that final decision,” Conway said on NBC. “But if Mr. Comey does testify, we’ll be watching with everyone else.”
Critics argued Trump would have difficulty successfully using this tactic because Comey is no longer in the government and Trump himself has publicly discussed his conversations with the former FBI director. Republicans also warned Trump about the negative fallout of any decision to stop Comey from testifying in public.
“I think the president is better served by getting all of this information out sooner rather than later,” Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt said on Sunday. “You don’t do that by invoking executive privilege on a conversation you had, apparently with nobody else in the room.”
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Sunday she hopes Comey’s testimony will clear up some of the public’s confusion about the Russian’s attempts to meddle in the presidential election. “There is so much speculation and so many stories and so many leaks that it’s very difficult to determine the facts of the Russian involvement in our elections last fall,” she said.
Collins added: “This will get us a chance to get his perspective on the issue of Russian involvement and also the issue of collaboration or collusion.”
