Another Crack in the Wall

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee announced that Hope Hicks, former senior aide to Donald Trump who worked closely by his side from before he even ran for President, will testify next week (details here and here). She is the first Trump aide to testify.

The President has attempted to use "executive privilege" to block all employees, current and former, from either appearing as witnesses or responding to subpoenas in any House inquiry. As this development shows, in addition to the Justice Department turning over documents in response to a subpoena, some cracks are starting to appear.

But the stonewall largely continues. Just yesterday, the White House once again evoked "executive privilege" to block release or testimony about a controversial proposal to add citizenship questions to the census (details here).

Leaked Republican research has revealed that the questions were actually designed to suppress non-white and Democratic participation (details here). The matter is currently the subject of a case now before the Supreme Court.

By constantly exerting executive privilege like this, Trump runs the danger that a court will severely trim this practice, thereby severely weakening the President. Richard Nixon tried this strategy and it both failed him and led to his resignation.

So we're not out of the woods with this, in what really is a constitutional crisis. More developments will be coming, particularly in litigation. Stay tuned.