The Sara Taylor Tractor Pull

Remarks from the Fray:

We assign privileges to communications we want to protect, e.g., doctor/patient, priest/penitent, attorney/client, spouse/spouse.

In each instance, the person from whom we would elicit testimony (doctor, lawyer, priest) asserts the privilege as a means to resist doing so. Conversely, the target of the investigation (patient, penitent, client) may assert the privilege to prevent testimony which might be harmful. But for the privilege, the parties might not feel free to communicate.

So in this instance, the White House is itself asserting the privilege, not "extending to Taylor . . . the right but apparently also the duty to claim executive privilege."

You can (somewhat easily) argue that the White House's construction and assertion of executive privilege is overly broad. But that such a privilege would be used to prevent testimony is not uncommon; it is, in fact, why the privilege exists.

Counselor Eggleston is right when he avers that the "clash may ultimately be decided by the judicial branch."

--Thufir_Hawat

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