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Opinion A way to solve the executive privilege dispute

December 3, 2021 at 5:10 p.m. EST
Former president Donald Trump speaks to his supporters during a rally at the Sarasota Fairgrounds in Sarasota, Fla., on July 3. (Octavio Jones/Reuters)

Regarding the Dec. 1 news article “Court examines bid to shield records”:

It is exceedingly rare that I find myself sympathetic to a claim by former president Donald Trump, but his claim to retain some vestige of his executive privilege after leaving the presidency seems to me to have some merit. To allow the current executive to claim the sole power of executive privilege over his predecessor’s records would allow a new executive, possibly of the other party, to seek to harm his predecessor (and potential future opponent) and his party by the selective release of what would otherwise have remained closed records. In this time of partisan rancor, that is a real concern.

Fortunately, we have a precedent for how to deal with such conflicts. In matters of attorney-client privilege claims, the court is known to appoint a confidential judicial monitor to consider the documents in question and evaluate the merit of the privilege claim. The same should be done to evaluate this privilege claim.

Avram Israel Reisner, Baltimore