Sorry, that was my summary of the DOJ’s opinion.
It is notable that the DOJ opinion makes only one mention of any occasions where presidential privilege has been invoked and rejected.
That’s Miers which they say was wrongly decided - always the useful get-out for any ruling you don’t like. The decision was stayed pending appeal and then it was agreed that the relevant people would be allowed to testify.
It’s almost as if they’d like to give the impression it’s never happened…
They do mention that for civil lawsuits there is only qualified immunity for Presidential advisers but United States v. Nixon doesn’t get a mention at all.
Presumably on the grounds that it doesn’t strictly speaking deal with the ability of Congress to compel testimony from Presidential aides.
For myself, my very limited understanding of previous precedent leads me to the view that so long as Congress is simply fishing for information, executive privilege probably does apply.
If and when anyone actually commences a criminal investigation, there would only be limited privilege, subject to being overridden where necessary and compatible with national security (bearing in mind the possibility of appropriate safeguards and restrictions regarding access to information).
In impeachment proceedings, the same would presumably apply although in Clinton’s case, the investigation had already been done by the Special Prosecutor.
In this case, the Special Prosecutor essentially said “I’m not touching this one but someone should”.
So far there’s a lot of waffle but no one is actually taking the step to instigate a criminal investigation into whether the President attempted to obstruct justice or to impeach him.
ETA: Except of course, I’m wrong. I’d completely forgotten about this:
