Trump Overrules The Supreme Court By Memo
Gaiser's DOJ opinion walls off Trump's talks with private advisers — hours before the ACLU hauls his re-written birthright orders back before the judge who already beat him.
Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser signed a Justice Department opinion Monday declaring President Trump can shield his communications with private advisers — anyone he consults outside the government — from Congress. Punchbowl News surfaced the memo Tuesday morning, hours before the ACLU hauled Trump's re-issued birthright citizenship orders back into a New Hampshire courtroom. Trump lost at the Supreme Court on tariffs, on birthright citizenship, on firing a Federal Reserve governor. His lawyers answered every loss the same way: with a new memo or a rewritten order.
Gaiser's opinion runs further than any court has gone. Judges have applied executive privilege to the president's own staff; Gaiser stretched it to cover "members of the public, state officials, or employees of other branches" — and to his aides' conversations with private citizens besides. Gaiser argued the president needs candid advice wherever he finds it. Punchbowl's Jake Sherman read it plainer: big implications if Democrats take the House and start investigating.
