Really? All of our policies have a name and a number. At my previous employer, all policies had a name and at least a date. At my employer before that, all policies had a name and a number.
I admit I find it very strange indeed that the Department of Justice is less organized than the middlish companies I’ve worked for. If you’d like to know the policy we have that, say, sets out the rules regarding whether or not I can accept gifts, I can tell you the name of the policy, its version number, date of issue, author, and everyone who signed off on it, all in less time than it took me to type this paragraph.
You could find out those things (other than number) but that’s not how they’re typically referred to.
If you thought someone was going to do that, then you would come up with some identifier, sure. But if you were following a policy that’s been SOP for several decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations, you might not expect that you would be challenged about it.
Really? The Attorney General (the top lawyer in the land) shouldn’t have documentation for the policy he himself quotes? Try again. That one doesn’t wash.
So someone says “Cite” to the Attorney General of the United States, about the law he is invoking, prospectively yet, and he says “It exists, but it doesn’t have an identifying name or chapter number” ? Whut?
So… Sessions went into a Senate Committee, about an incredibly sensitive topic, and would have KNOWN that they would be asking him about conversations he had with the president. This was pretty much a given.
Sessions would have prepared for this meeting, I assume. He would not have said to himself “self, I am just going to wing it in there”
Sessions would have reasonably have know what he himself was going to say. He probably would have known that he was going to not answer questions about what he and the president talked about, using the “I want to preserve EP, just in case the president ever wants to invoke it anytime in the next 4 years”.
I think that as a somewhat intelligent person, Sessions might have guessed that he would get push-back on this kind of non-answer, answer. So he might have actually done some homework, and figured out what “policy” he was following here. And what precedents he would invoke. (That’s lawyer-talk)
Yet he did not. One can conclude that:
Sessions is a moron who did not prepare
Sessions assumed that “everyone knew” so he did not have to say what the policy was, or what precedents he was following for invoking “Maybe executive privilege at some future date perhaps”
Sessions was bullshitting - there is no such policy or precedent, and he was just refusing to answer questions, using a pathetic, wilting fig-leaf.
This is a long post, but you’re just ignoring the prior discussion.
As I posted from ABC, the policy Sessions invoked was in fact of longstanding, and they provided the background. So it’s reasonable to assume that Sessions was saying the truth that he consulted with career DOJ people who apprised him of this fact, and therefore did not feel it necessary to spell it out. It’s ridiculous to speculate that the entire policy was made up by Sessions on the spot and just happened to coincide with the longstanding policy of the Obama administration and others dating back to Reagan. And the speculation that the policy didn’t exist altogether - without even bothering to address the sources noted by ABC - is not worth discussing.
What’s marginally more interesting is that so many people are able to just ignore a link and quote and just go on discussing things as if these didn’t exist. But not that interesting.
Unless anything of actual substance emerges - unlikely, based on recent posts here - I think I’m going to stand on what’s already been posted.
Well, yes–but as others have pointed out, he referenced the policy, but he doesn’t appear to have followed the policy.
The policy has several steps:
“work with appropriate congressional representatives to determine whether a mutually satisfactory accommodation is available.”
What evidence do we have that this occurred? Given the frustration of the senators, absent evidence he completed this step, it appears he didn’t complete it.
if those efforts are unsuccessful, the White House counsel and the attorney general should then consult with each other to determine whether to recommend that the President invoke the privilege.
This step presumably occurred.
If, after extensive consultations with the White House counsel and “careful review,” the impasse reaches a point where the president needs to decide whether to officially invoke executive privilege, then the department head – in this case Sessions – “shall request the Congressional body” suspend its request for information “to protect the privilege pending a Presidential decision.”
I saw no such request.
He referenced a policy, but does not appear to have followed a policy. This is inconsistent with the practice of a licensed attorney who is holding himself to highest ethical standards and who is being careful to follow the law. This is consistent with the practice of a licensed attorney who is protecting a corrupt regime.
These various steps haven’t happened yet. They may yet happen. If the Senators follow the process and Sessions refuses to negotiate and consult etc., then you can come back and complain. But it’s not like he had a hotline to the WH with him at the hearing.
In the context of questions being thrown at him for the first time at a hearing, Sessions was completely consistent with the longstanding policy that he referenced.
They sure sound to me as though they should happen prior to offering the AG for testimony. Do you have a reason to believe that this order–an order which obviously frustrated many members of the committee–is the intended order?
Handling it ahead of time would have been easy and efficient.
work with appropriate congressional representatives to determine whether a mutually satisfactory accommodation is available.
That is, ask for a list of questions that might be asked, explaining that some of the questions may cover areas where the president may invoke executive privilege. Explain further that questions not on the list will be deferred.
The probable questions were obvious. The president and his attorneys knew what most of them would be, and easily could have asked if they were not sure.
Doing so would have forced the president to shit or get off the pot, however. This way, the buck never stops getting passed: Sessions can pass it to the president, the president can pass it to Sessions.
Can you point to previous hearings where this policy has been invoked in this manner?
Can you point to any previous hearings where cabinet members were asked about private and sensitive conversations they had with the president?
IMO the obligation is on these senators to put the questions to Sessions in advance if they want him to be able to confer with the pres. No reason he has to clear a bunch of hypothetical questions in advance just in case he might be asked about them. And worst come to worst, they can always follow up. No difference at all.
[Though personally, I don’t think these senators were interested in getting answers to their questions altogether. Their primary interest was getting on TV and video asking righteously indignant questions. So it works out for everyone.]
The “cabinet members” is needlessly specific, I think: during the Iran-Contra hearings, Poindexter, Reagan’s National Security Advisor, was asked such questions, I believe.
If this situation has never occurred before, it’s a stretch to say Session’s is following longstanding policy, if the policy doesn’t lay out the order in which things should happen.
It’s my understanding that in the case of Iran Contra, the executive privilege issue was hashed out in advance and Reagan decided not to invoke it. It’s not like the administration officials made the decision to disclose this info on the spot in the hearings.
It’s pretty obvious from the description of an extended discussions and negotiations over it that it’s not happening in mid-hearing.
That last word is adroitly shaded. “Referenced” implies some dignity, like “cited”. Puts a nice shine on it, as if he had “referenced” Presidential Policy Number 312-A. Instead of a vague something-or-other which he is either unwilling or unable to specify. Nicely spun!
This would be the “longstanding policy” that isn’t written down anywhere, because everyone knows it?
The one that says “You don’t need to work with congressional representatives, or consult with anyone, or do careful review, or decide on whether to invoke Executive Privilege, you can invoke it in advance, in case you want to invoke it at any time in the future”. I guess since everyone knows this, it’s all OK.
…right. That’s the way it should work, according to my understanding of the policy. Not this muddled Schrodinger’s Privilege, neither invoked nor waived.
That’s exactly my point: there have been previous members of a president’s staff who have talked about sensitive conversations with the president before a Senate investigation, but AFAICT nobody has pulled this Sessions maneuver before.