Courts Avoided Refereeing Bet. Congress, POTUS. Until Now.

Courts Avoided Refereeing Bet. Congress, POTUS. Until Now.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

President Donald Trump's refusal to hand over records to Congress and allow executive branch employees to provide information and testimony to Congress during the impeachment battle is the strongest test yet of legal principles that over the past 200 years have not yet been fully defined by U.S. courts.

It's not the first test: Struggles over power among the political branches predate our Constitution. The framers chose not to, and probably could not, fully resolve them.

And federal judges have been reluctant to weigh in when presidents refuse to share information with Congress. From 1789 until Trump's inauguration in 2017, federal courts had only considered five cases in which the president claimed executive privilege in response to a congressional subpoena.

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