Noah Feldman, Columnist

If Trump Tries to Silence Comey, Expect Sparks to Fly

It isn't clear that the president can keep their conversations confidential, especially because he's already revealed them.

June 1, 2017 at 1:37 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Will Trump let it get this far?
Photographer: Eric Thayer/Getty Images

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Can President Donald Trump block former FBI Director James Comey from testifying before Congress by invoking executive privilege? The answer turns out to be surprisingly tricky, despite the precedent of U.S. v. Nixon, in which the U.S. Supreme Court made President Richard Nixon hand over the Watergate tapes to a federal judge.

On the one hand, a congressional investigation is different from a criminal case -- which makes it less likely that a court would allow Comey to testify if Trump refuses. On the other hand, Trump has spoken about his conversations on Twitter -- which arguably waives his privilege to protect a private conversation with his adviser.