House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said Sunday special counsel Robert Mueller’s report is off limits to executive privilege.
“The president must personally assert executive privilege and I do not believe it exists here at all,” Nadler told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“As we learned from the Nixon tapes cases, executive privilege cannot hide — cannot be used to hide wrongdoing,” he said. “In that case, the Supreme Court … ordered that all the claims of executive privilege be overridden and the tapes be public. I mean, the president may try to assert it, may try to hide things behind it. But I don’t think that’s right or [will] be successful.”
The 1974 United States v. Nixon case determined former President Richard Nixon must hand over tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials relating to meetings between the president and those indicted by a grand jury in the Watergate scandal. Eight Supreme Court justices, the ninth had recused himself, ruled that materials subpoenaed in a criminal trial could not be claimed under executive privilege solely in the interest of confidentiality.
Mueller submitted his final report on the Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr on Friday. Barr previously vowed to be as transparent as the law allows, but did not commit to releasing the entire report.
President Trump has said he does not mind if Mueller’s report is released to the public, but has also repeatedly criticized the investigation.
Deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters Sunday that Trump and the White House have not received Mueller’s report or been briefed on it.
