Is executive privilege a partisan issue?
No. Presidents from both parties have invoked executive privilege. And neither side has a clear winning record. In 1998, President Clinton became the fist president since Nixon to invoke executive privilege and lose in the courts, when a federal judge ruled Clinton aides could be called to testify in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Do presidents invoke executive privilege mainly in matters of national security? No, not at all. Presidents have cited the privilege for all sorts of issues. For instance, the Bush administration invoked the spirit, if the not letter, of executive privilege when it argued that Vice President Dick Cheney need not disclose what was discussed during his Taskforce on Energy meetings. The Supreme Court upheld the administration’s claim in 2004. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, issued this warning: “Once executive privilege is asserted, coequal branches of the government are set on a collision course.” Could this current case — involving request
