Trumps tweets, interviews could cost him executive privilege

President Donald Trump’s disclosure last week that he questioned former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey on multiple occasions about the agency’s ongoing Russia probe, as well as Trump’s tweet about the possible existence of tape recordings of these conversations, will put the commander-in-chief on shaky legal ground as Congress digs further into why the president abruptly fired the man leading that probe.

Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt last week that he had planned to oust the FBI chief before U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions recommended Comey’s removal. That contradicted a White House statement that Trump acted based on Comey’s mishandling of the FBI’s Hillary Clinton private email-server investigation.

In the same NBC interview, Trump also claimed Comey told him that the FBI was not investigating him as part of the agency’s probe into whether the president’s associates colluded with the Russian government.

“I actually asked him” if I was under investigation, Trump told Holt, noting that he spoke with Comey once over dinner and twice by phone.

Legal experts said Trump’s disclosures put into question whether his conversations with Comey are protected by presidential executive privilege, a legal doctrine that is not constitutionally guaranteed but that historically has protected a president’s communications. Trump’s public discussions of the Comey conversations may have opened the door for Congress to press Comey on what was said during his conversations with Trump, wrote Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School in a Twitter post.

https://thinkprogress.org/trumps-tweets-interviews-could-cost-him-executive-privilege-d49d667290e7