Very true. But at least the Trump-opponent side is spared the stress of having to believe the unbelievable. Whereas the Trump defenders are daily required to undergo the mental trauma of accepting the preposterous as ‘truth.’
Further to this issue from ABC News: White House could take months to decide on invoking executive privilege
"Two months after Barack Obama’s inauguration, the White House’s top lawyer, Greg Craig, issued a memorandum to the attorney general and other department heads laying out what he said were “procedures … designed to ensure that this Administration acts responsibly and consistently with respect to White House confidentiality interests, with due regard for the responsibility and prerogatives of Congress.”
Wow. That’s very wordy. I for one respect today’s White House’s MAGA syllabilastic simplicity. (yeah, I made that word up, sue me.)
“Sylliballistic” works well to describe words used as a form of artillery. 'Course, I added the “l” so, really, I didn’t steal it.
Very quiet in here all of a sudden …
Does anyone have any comment about ABC reporting that Sessions is correct in saying that he “was following longstanding Executive Branch and Justice Department policies – the same policies most recently reinforced by Barack Obama’s administration”?
Does that change anyone’s view here? About Sessions? About Obama? About ABC? About yourself? 
My own view is that three things are obvious:
(1) It is sometimes appropriate to request the opportunity to discuss privilege with the privilege-holder before answering a question, and this is not itself the invocation of privilege;
(2) When you reasonably suspect you will be asked questions that involve privilege at a hearing, you should make reasonable efforts to speak with the privilege-holder before the hearing;
(3) Failure to make reasonable efforts to speak with the privilege-holder before the hearing is a form of stonewalling–essentially an effort to delay or avoid answering the questions.
I don’t see that the DOJ policy contradicts any of that. Am I missing something?
I don’t think this a huge deal unless Sessions refuses to discuss the matter with the President and get a decision either way and just tries to leave it in purgatory. Then I think that’s abusing the idea of the privilege.
I read the article and I have a question regarding these remarks:
Were the conversations Mr. Sessions was asked about “confidential communications”?
ISTM that the process outlined in the Greg Craig memo is much longer and more complicated than the “step in to the president’s office and get his OK” type of process that you seem to be envisioning. Under the Craig memo process, there would clearly be an extended negotiation as to exactly what could be disclosed, not spur of the moment decisions to questions raised on the spot, based on previously approved guidelines.
Certainly, if the Senators put these questions in writing and submitted them to Sessions, then based on this memo the WH would have to make a decision - possibly after some further negotiation - as to what their stance would be, based on this memo.
In sum, I think both your second and third points are at odds with this memo.
Some further discussion of the matter here (unfortunately it cut me off - at a particularly interesting point - as I don’t subscribe to that journal).
Well you may differ from a lot of other posters in this thread - and some Democratic senators - who seem to think it’s a big deal regardless.
Not really.
He was asked what department policy he was following, and would not answer that. He was stonewalling even the answer to the question as to why he could not answer the question.
If he had actually named the policy, or the memo, or any of the facts of the case, then he may have had a better point.
Some steps that seemed left out.
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“work with appropriate congressional representatives to determine whether a mutually satisfactory accommodation is available.”"
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White House counsel and the attorney general should then “consult” with each other “to determine whether to recommend that the President invoke the privilege.”
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“shall request the Congressional body” suspend its request for information “to protect the privilege pending a Presidential decision.”
If he had said, “After consulting with the white-house council, I will need to get back with you to see if that is covered under EP, and I will submit the answers that I can at a later time.” that’d be one thing. But he was not following the policies and guidelines that have been passed down from the reagan era (which itself was largely created to cover up some crimes of that administration), he was just refusing to answer, under the possibility that trump did not want him to answer.
He was either very unprepared for the questioning, in that not only did he not discuss with the administration or its council as to what conversations would be under EP, and didn’t even know what policy it was that he was following, or he was making up excuses on the spot, and finding cover by reinterpreting policies in a different way than they were originally intended.
The fact that it took them 2 days to come up with this suggests very strongly to me that it was the end of a search as to how they could get out of answering questions that they did not want to.
As is pointed out by the fast and furious eric holder debacle, EP is also not a blanket immunity, but needs justification, and also cannot be used in cases where those conversations are already in the public sphere.
So, any conversations that Trump tweeted about should be fair game, and any conversations that Comey spoke of should be fair game.
IANAL, so my analysis could be off, but I hold that sessions was using EP by a new and looser definition than previous admins have held it to. Whether or not that is simply a break in tradition, or if is actually something that is legally different in an actionable way, I could not say.
Where are you getting these facts from?
He said at the hearing that he had “consulted with senior career attorneys in the department” who “believe this is consistent with [his] duties”. I don’t think the policies have a name.
How do you know that “it took them 2 days to come up with this”? I don’t think this is correct either.
Basically, where are you getting your various assertions from?
I don’t think that’s right. It’s obviously fact-dependent, but surely the proper process is (1) reasonably prepare with the privilege-holder (and his counsel, obviously) for the questions you reasonably anticipate; (2) if that preparation isn’t sufficient to know whether the privilege is waived as to any particular question, then negotiate the scope of the question; (3) if the question still stands, then go back to the privilege-holder; (4) repeat as necessary.
If you skip step (1), you’re not proceeding in good faith, IMO. And whether steps (2)-(4) are necessary really depends on the circumstances. Sessions knew he would be asked whether the President told him why he wanted to fire Comey. That’s a very specific question, and he should have gotten an answer on whether the President would be asserting executive privilege on that question.
Wouldn’t be the first time. It may also be that the Dem Senators are not expecting Sessions to come back and answer the questions once he has clarified. He was pretty cagey about committing to return.
From his testimony.
But, that is not how it is supposed to be done. Congress is supposed to consult with white house council about any things that they want to ask about that may be covered under EP.
The witness does not make the determination, even if he consulted with attorneys.
And, what policies don’t have names? How do you refer to them? How do you ask for them to be brought up for review? It may not be named “Bob.”, but there would have to be some way of identifying it. Even if it is referred to as Policy DTR2054ZXk, it still has a name.
His testimony was on Tuesday.
The first the WH goes to justify his remarks is on Thursday.
So, maybe not quite 48 hours, but certainly more than a day, when it really should have come out before the testimony, or at the least, shortly after that afternoon. All it would be would be a matter of finding the policy, and printing it out to send to either the senators on the committee or to the press.
They got k9befriender! Those bastards! :mad:
Won’t somebody think of the puppies! 
ETA: Aha! Saved in the nick of time by the edit feature, I see! 
Could you be a bit more specific?
This is incorrect.
How do you know this?
Any source for this claim either?
As I was actually going off of the quotes that you gave, I don’t know how much more specific I can be.
Possibly, but that was my understanding of the explanation of the policy.
From your cite, it said, "The memorandum said the White House counsel’s office and the relevant department should first “work with appropriate congressional representatives to determine whether a mutually satisfactory accommodation is available.”
That was not what happened. Instead, it was a witness claiming that he did not know whether or not trump would want to invoke EP.
How do I know that policies have names, or some sort of unique way of identifying them?
You are right, I suppose that I do not know that, but it seems like a terrible policy not to have any way to uniquely refer to a policy. That way lies serious ambiguities.
How do you write up employees for not following policies, if you have no way to refer to the policies that they are violating?
It is possible that they just have a big room full of policies that people go diving into from time to time to try to dig up the relevant one, but I would assume that they have some sort of better organizational method.
The first explanation from the whitehouse as to the policy that I have tracked down was your cite from thursday.
If you have an earlier justification then go for it, but I looked about, and I could not find any articles about it that predated your cite.
I don’t see any basis for your claims.
The WH Counsel wasn’t sitting there and Sessions didn’t have the questions in advance.
Obviously, the memo talking about the counsel was discussing a procedure whereby both sides can work things out. It wasn’t contemplating doing this on the fly in a hearing.
I don’t think this is generally how the world works. But if you think otherwise you should find out, instead of just asserting that this is the case.
That’s not how things work.
You made a claim that such-and-such is the case, and you then made inferences from those supposed facts. Now, only after being pressed, you acknowledge that the entire basis for your claim is that you couldn’t find any evidence that it was untrue.
I don’t think this is worth bothering with, and WADR the same applies to all your other claims, which are for the most part similarly shaky.
My view is that it’s an excuse for the White House to delay, delay, delay indefinitely. I particularly take issue with this:
Remind me…who asked for that hearing?
Are you saying that you don’t believe that organizations have written policies that are organized and easy to access? Every company large and small that I’ve worked for has had upwards of hundreds of policies. Each of these polices had a name and a designation. These would be in large binders, neatly indexed and available in every office. These days, of course, they are also online. Also meticulously organized and searchable. Unless I’m not understanding what you said here, you must be self-employed if you are unfamiliar with this.
What I’m saying is that most corporate policies are not commonly referred to by name and number, and that most don’t even have official names unless you count whatever happens to be the heading of the latest memo which contains them.
The way it works is that if you want to know the company policy on X, you go about looking for the company policy on X, not the Company Policy On X. And if you have a unique or unusual situation, such as Sessions had, or if you’re a Company Bigwig, such as Sessions is, you consult directly with the company’s compliance people and ask them what do in your exact situation, as Sessions did.
And then if some skeptic expresses skepticism over whether the policy you’re referring to exists, as happened to Sessions, then you go back to the compliance officers and ask for the written documentation, as Sessions did, and they produce the actual policies, as happened here.
So everything hangs together and all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds and God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world and so on.
I say the above based on a couple decades experience with Fortune 500 companies. And people who think things playing out as above suggests something nefarious are in all likelihood the ones who have no experience with such things. Like perhaps professional dog-walkers. Just a hunch, that.
But if someone asks you what policy you’re following, you need at least some way of answering that question. Your answer might be “It’s Policy X-11-B”, or it might be “It’s the policy on senatorial stonewalling”, or it might be “It’s the policy published on March 7”, or “It’s the policy which says <insert quote here>”. Your answer should not be “Well, I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s some policy or another”.