Trump acolyte Jeffrey Clark reportedly presented a 15-page letter to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol stating that he would not testify due to executive privilege, conservative website AmGreatness reports.

“Because former President Trump was properly entitled, while he held office, to the confidential advice of lawyers like Mr. Clark, Mr. Clark is subject to a sacred trust—one that is particularly vital to the constitutional separation of powers,” says the letter written by Clark’s attorney.  “As a result, any attempts—whether by the House or by the current President—to invade that sphere of confidentiality must be resisted.”

Clark’s assertion has a number of significant hurdles to overcome.  First, Clark cannot make an assertion of executive privilege; that’s something only the sitting President of the United States can do, and the Biden Administration has made it clear it will not make any such assertion in the J6 investigation.

Second, executive privilege only holds relating to discussions relating to policy matters, not political ones.  The actions to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes were not a matter of US government policy; they were an attempt by a political campaign to overturn a duly-held election which Donald Trump lost.

And third, executive privilege does not hold when the people involved are discussing committing a potential crime–like illegally overturning a duly-held election.

Clark is working under an erroneous-on-its-face assertion by former Georgia Republican Congressman Doug Collins, who is acting as an attorney for Trump.  Clark received a letter from Collins saying, “President Trump continues to assert that the non-public information the Committees seek is and should be protected from disclosure by the executive privilege,” and that this “executive privilege applicable to communications with President Trump belongs to the Office of the Presidency, not to any individual President, and President Biden has no power to unilaterally waive it.”

The letter is correct in saying that the right to assert executive privilege sits “with the Office of the Presidency, not any individual President;” Collins fails to note that Trump no longer holds the Office of the President.