Executive privilege is the right of the president of the United States and other members of the executive branch to maintain confidential communications under certain circumstances within the executive branch and to resist some subpoenas and other oversight by the legislative and judicial branches of government in pursuit of particular information or personnel relating to those confidential communications. The right comes into effect when revealing information would impair governmental functions. Neither executive privilege nor the oversight power of Congress is explicitly mentioned in the United States Constitution. However, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that executive privilege and congressional oversight each are a consequence of the doctrine of the separation of powers, derived from the supremacy of each branch in its own area of Constitutional activity.
Alberto R. Gonzales is an American lawyer who served as the 80th United States Attorney General, appointed in February 2005 by President George W. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive government to date. He was the first Hispanic to serve as White House Counsel. Earlier he had been Bush's General Counsel during the latter's governorship of Texas. Gonzales had also served as Secretary of State of Texas and then as a Texas Supreme Court Justice.
James Brien Comey Jr. is an American lawyer who was the 7th director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2013 until his dismissal in May 2017. Comey was a registered Republican for most of his adult life; however, in 2016, he described himself as unaffiliated.
Paul Joseph McNulty is an American attorney and university administrator who is currently the ninth president of Grove City College. He served as the Deputy Attorney General of the United States from March 17, 2006, to July 26, 2007. Prior to that, he was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
James Andrew Baker is a former American government official at the Department of Justice who served as general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
On December 7, 2006, the George W. Bush Administration's Department of Justice ordered the unprecedented midterm dismissal of seven United States attorneys. Congressional investigations focused on whether the Department of Justice and the White House were using the U.S. Attorney positions for political advantage. Allegations were that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters. The U.S. attorneys were replaced with interim appointees, under provisions in the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization.
Monica Marie Goodling is a former United States government lawyer and Republican political appointee in the George W. Bush administration who is best known for her role in the Dismissal of U.S. Attorneys Controversy in 2006. She was the principal deputy director of public affairs for the United States Department of Justice, serving under Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales. A Department of Justice investigation concluded that she had violated the law, but she was not prosecuted because she had been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony. The Virginia State Bar publicly reprimanded Goodling in May 2011 for having "improperly utilized political affiliation and other political considerations when making hiring decisions for career positions."
Michael J. Elston, is a United States lawyer who currently serves as Acting Secretary of the Board of Governors for the United States Postal Service (USPS), in Washington, D.C. Elston has served as the Associate General Counsel and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer for the USPS since 2014. From November 2005 to June 2007, he was a political appointee in the administration of President George W. Bush, serving as the Chief of Staff & Counselor, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, United States Department of Justice, before resigning in the wake of the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. He was appointed as an Assistant United States Attorney in 1999 by Attorney General Janet Reno.
This article about dismissed U.S. attorneys summarizes the circumstances surrounding a number of U.S. attorneys dismissed from office in the United States Department of Justice in 2006. Eight were dismissed In December 2006, and others may have been forced out of office under similar circumstances in 2005 and 2006. The manner of the firings, the congressional response to them, and the explanations offered by Bush administration officials are aspects of a political controversy starting in the first quarter of 2007. As of May 2007 a clear explanation of why the attorneys were dismissed had not been put forward by the Bush administration or the Department of Justice leadership. There are in total 93 U.S. attorneys that serve 94 Federal district courts.
A detailed chronology of events in the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy.
The various documents obtained by request or subpoena during dismissal of U.S attorneys controversy by both the United States House and Senate Committees on the Judiciary, originally produced by the Department of Justice (DOJ) or White House have been made available to the public and press via the two congressional judiciary committees' web sites. The documents received a great deal of attention in the United States press from March 2007 onward, and have been repeatedly cited or excerpted in news reports, editorials and analyses. The documents largely include copies of memoranda and email among leadership and key individuals within the United States Department of Justice, as well as key members of the Executive Office of the President, commonly termed White House.
The United States House Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, have oversight authority over Department of Justice (DOJ). In 2007 it conducted public and closed-door oversight and investigative hearings on the DOJ's interactions with the White House and staff members of the Executive Office of the President. A routine oversight hearing on January 18, 2007 by the Senate committee was the first public congressional occasion that Attorney General Gonzales responded to questions about dismissed United States Attorneys (USAs). Both committees invited or subpoened past and present Department of Justice officers and staff to appear and testify during 2007, and both committees requested or subpoenaed documents, and made the documents that were produced publicly available.
Valerie Elaine Caproni is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the President of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the War on Terrorism. Information collected under this program was protected within a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment codenamed STELLARWIND.
Steven Andrew Engel is an American lawyer. He served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Donald Trump administration. Engel, who previously worked in the George W. Bush administration as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and confirmed on November 7, 2017. On January 20, 2021, he was succeeded by Christopher H. Schroeder, serving under the Biden Administration.
James Comey, the seventh Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was fired by U.S. President Donald Trump on May 9, 2017. Comey had been criticized in 2016 for his handling of the FBI's investigation of the Hillary Clinton email controversy and in 2017 for the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections as it related to alleged collusion with Trump's presidential campaign.
The Special Counsel investigation was an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials, and possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his associates. The investigation was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. It was also called the Russia investigation, the Mueller probe, and the Mueller investigation. The Mueller investigation culminated with the Mueller report, which concluded that though the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference and expected to benefit from it, there was no evidence to bring any conspiracy charges against Trump or his associates. The report did not reach a conclusion about possible obstruction of justice of Trump, citing a Justice Department guideline that prohibits the federal indictment of a sitting president. The investigation resulted in charges against 34 individuals and 3 companies, 8 guilty pleas, and a conviction at trial.
A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election is the official 568-page report of the actions taken by the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) during the 2016 U.S. presidential election connected with Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, prepared by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) "in response to requests from numerous Chairmen and Ranking Members of Congressional oversight committees, various organizations, and members of the public."
The Mueller report, officially titled Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, is the official report documenting the findings and conclusions of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States presidential election, allegations of conspiracy or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, and allegations of obstruction of justice. The report was submitted to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019, and a redacted version of the 448-page report was publicly released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on April 18, 2019. It is divided into two volumes. The redactions from the report and its supporting material were placed under a temporary "protective assertion" of executive privilege by then-President Trump on May 8, 2019, preventing the material from being passed to Congress, despite earlier reassurance by Barr that Trump would not exert privilege.
This is a timeline of major events in second half of 2019 related to the investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, and the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and the first half of 2019, but precedes that of 2020 and 2021.
