Checking and balancing.
The legislature wants info from the executive. The executive doesn't want to give it. The judiciary says he has to. The story will continue.
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U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Monday that the government had failed to make a convincing showing that the 21 messages between White House aide Robert Blair and Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey were eligible for protection under legal privileges protecting the development of presidential advice or decisions made by other government officials.
The messages are considered key evidence about the event that triggered Trump’s impeachment by the House last year: his decision to halt aid to Ukraine in what critics and even some administration officials said was an attempt to pressure that country to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
As the impeachment probe unfolded, The New York Times sought the Blair-Duffey emails under the Freedom of Information Act, filing suit last November after it didn't receive the requested messages. In May, Jackson ordered that the disputed emails be turned over to her for in camera review.
During a teleconference Monday in which she announced her decision, Jackson did not rule out the possibility that she might at some point uphold the government’s bid for secrecy for the emails, but she said a pair of declarations OMB Deputy General Counsel Heather Walsh filed to back up the executive privilege claims were too vague.
For more - Wikipedia: Executive Privilege.
