(RoyalPatriot.com )- An executive order signed by George W. Bush in November 2001 stated that an incumbent president could not override a former president’s claim to executive privilege over documents. Should the incumbent president not agree with the former president’s claim to executive privilege in withholding records, the incumbent president may inform the former, as well as the Archivist—being the National Archives and Records Administration.
Nearly a decade later, Barack Obama reversed that guidance, which reportedly went back to Watergate and the Reagan era where incumbent president’s had the final say over past presidents, which gave them authority to act through the National Archives, Just the News reported.
“In making the determination referred to in subsection (a) of this section, the Archivist shall abide by any instructions given him by the incumbent President or his designee unless otherwise directed by a final court order,” Obama’s order dated Jan. 21, 2009 stated.
Because Trump never changed that guidance during his administration, the Biden White House has the authority to override Trump’s claims to executive privilege “in both the Jan. 6 congressional probe and the FBI’s criminal investigation of the Mar-a-Lago records.”
The FBI and Justice Department were able to move ahead with the search warrant after the Biden White House allegedly cleared the way for them to act first by “empaneling a grand jury in May and issuing a subpoena to Trump, visiting his home on June 3 and eventually raiding the home with a criminal search warrant on Aug. 8.”
Alan Dershowitz encourages Trump to pursue a legal challenge to the FBI raid on his home, claiming that the Supreme Court might give him more deference than they did with Nixon over the Watergate scandal.
“The idea that a sitting president can somehow waive the executive privilege of a previous president really wrecks the executive privilege, which is implicit in Article II of the Constitution,” Dershowitz told Just the News last week. “You can’t have a privilege, which then your political opponent can waive.
