Thursday, June 28, 2007

Olbermann and Jonathan Turley Discuss Executive Privilege

Thanks to Think Progress there is a video of Jonathan Turley saying that if you present the NSA Wiretapping program as a crime, he won't be able to use executive privilege.

From Think Progress:

Turley: Avoid Bush’s Executive Privilege Claim By Investigating NSA Program As A Crime »
Yesterday, after years of White House stonewalling, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to the Bush administration for documents related to the warrantless domestic surveillance program.

Today, during a background discussion with reporters, senior Bush administration officials indicated that they would invoke executive privilege in order to deny the NSA documents to Congress, just as they did this morning concerning subpoenas related to the U.S. attorney scandal. “Our response to [the NSA] subpoenas will be the same as our response was before,” said an anonymous official.

But last night on MSNBC’s Countdown, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley claimed that Congress may be able to “get around the executive privilege in court” by saying “we are investigating a potential crime.” Turley said this was possible because warrantless wiretapping is “a federal crime” that “the president has ordered hundreds of people do.” Watch it:

(You'll have to go to the link to watch it. It's not on YouTube yet.)

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