White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s out-of-the-blue announcement that she is abandoning her current job to become an off-the-books adviser to the president raised eyebrows on Thursday.
During a panel discussion on MS NOW’s “On The Line” with host Alicia Menendez, it was noted that the imminent departure of President Donald Trump’s spokesperson comes on the heels of an unexpected and controversial memo from Attorney General Todd Blanche released on Tuesday, after he was sworn in.
According to the Blanche memo, the executive privilege that shields White House advisors will now extend to private citizens who advise the president.
“It remains to be seen whether a court will say that its construction of who is entitled to executive privilege is valid or not,” MS NOW legal correspondent Lisa Rubin told the panel. “But, at least as the DOJ considers it, is Karoline Leavitt, an outside adviser when she leaves the presidency, the presidential administration, and continues to talk to Trump on the phone and give him advice?"
"Absolutely,” she elaborated. “Because that memo defines the term private adviser in a breathtakingly broad way, it's basically anyone that the president calls or anyone that even his direct staff calls and solicits advice from can be a private adviser to the president.”
Host Menendez, pointed out, “I think what is interesting to me is the fact that it is happening in the shadow of this memo, where now it feels a little bit like that Oprah moment: ‘You get a car, you get a car, you get a car.’”
“Now it's like ‘You're a private advisor, you're a private advisor, you're a private advisor,’ because they now have a legal shield that they did not previously have,” she added.
Conservative Amanda Carpenter, a Trump critic, suggested, “What Trump is trying to do here, and through this memo is shield any kind of accountability that may come later. I view this as a kind of preemptive strike against any accountability that might come after the midterm elections.”
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