<P> While investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed former FBI Director James Comey to testify . Comey was fired several weeks before being subpoenaed but had appeared before the committee once before in March while still serving as director . Less than a week before the scheduled hearing, it was reported that President Trump was considering invoking executive privilege to prevent Comey's testimony . According to attorney Page Pate, it seemed unlikely that executive privilege would be applicable here, as Trump had publicly spoken about the encounters in question multiple times . </P> <P> Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokesman, released a statement on June 5 stating: "The president's power to assert executive privilege is very well - established . However, in order to facilitate a swift and thorough examination of the facts sought by the Senate Intelligence Committee, President Trump will not assert executive privilege regarding James Comey's scheduled testimony ." </P> <P> Also in June 2017, other officials in the Trump administration, including Dan Coats and Jeff Sessions, declined to describe in congressional hearings conversations they had with President Trump, on the ground that they wanted Trump to have an opportunity to decide whether to invoke executive privilege . According to Robert S. Litt, former general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the Obama administration, this argument may be legitimate under the presidential communications privilege: </P> <P> (T) he privilege belongs to the President, and inferior officers should not take it upon themselves to disclose such communications without express permission from the White House . Certainly that is how these issues were handled in the Obama Administration: when Congress asked an agency for information about presidential communications, as it often did, the agency consulted with the White House to see if there were objections to responding . </P>

Executive privilege refers to the right of the supreme court to withhold information from the public