Latest in Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)
How did the Trump impeachment defense team deploy OLC memos to defend the president?
The Office of Legal Counsel released an opinion detailing the legal rationale for their determination that "the complaint submitted to the ICIG does not involve an 'urgent concern'" and that the DNI thus has no statutory obligation to give the complaint to the congressional intelligence committees. The memo can be found here.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has released an opinion supporting the Treasury Department's refusal to comply with a congressional request for President Trump's tax returns. The OLC opinion can be read here and below.
The Justice Department disclosed an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) stating that it is unconstitutional for Congress to prohibit executive branch lawyers from accompanying witnesses who are current and former executive branch employees called to testify.
Congress and the courts will soon have the opportunity to respond to Donald Trump’s declaration that Congress’s failure to fund his wall at the level he demanded has resulted in a “national emergency” at the southern border. I and others have written about the weakness of the legal basis for this declaration.
President Trump announced in the Rose Garden on Feb. 15 that he is declaring a national emergency on the southern border, with the goal of obtaining an extra $6.5 billion to build a border wall.
The Department of Justice has released a 2014 Office of Legal Counsel opinion approving airstrikes against the Islamic State under the president's Article II authority as commander-in-chief. The memo is available below.
Can a sitting president be indicted? Often, in answering this question, commentators point to Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions answering in the contrary. To whatever extent the writer agrees or disagrees with the opinions’ conclusion, the government’s position on the matter is usually presented as a long-standing and clear “no.”
The opinion on the April 2018 airstrikes against Syrian chemical-weapons facilities follows straightforwardly from Obama-era legal opinions, including one we did not know about until today.
The Washington Post’s recent report that the president is a subject in the special counsel investigation raises a number of intriguing questions—among them, who leaked information about discussions between Robert Mueller and President Trump’s counsel, and for what reason. As is always the case, the leakers may have had a variety of motivations.