Turley: Blanket pardons would be 'final nail in Bush's coffin'

by David Edwards and Muriel Kane

President Bush has consistently claimed executive privilege in response to attempts to investigate potentially illegal actions by his administration, and it now seems that he could continue to make that claim even after leaving office. There is also speculation that Bush could issue blanket pardons for anyone who might have engaged in torture or other criminal activities under his orders.

On Wednesday, an article in the New York Times noted that President Truman had invoked executive privilege in 1953, when he was no longer president, to avoid having to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Congress did not challenge that unprecedented claim, and legal cases involving Watergate and Iran-Contra have given it some tentative support.

"Can they really do that?" MSNBC's Rachel Maddow asked constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley on Thursday.

"This is very controversial," Turley replied. "Truman's own people later questioned whether they actually did have the right that they invoked, and it's really never been tested, it's never gone to the Supreme Court. I personally have considerable doubts about it."

Turley explained that although federal law gives former presidents control over the release of presidential papers, what is being discussed here goes far beyond that. He indicated his belief that "this idea that President Bush can continue to invoke executive privilege even against the position of a sitting president, I think is pretty shaky."

"Ultimately," Turley suggested, "a court may have two presidents in front of it, one a sitting, one an ex-president, taking rivaling positions on executive privilege. In my view, the court would be insane to take the position of the former president over a sitting president as what is required to protect the office of the presidency."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Scary_possibility_of_blanket_pardons_1114.html