executive privilege
Noun
Meaning
executive privilege (uncountable)
(US) The right of the president of the United States and other members of the executive branch to maintain confidential communications and to resist certain subpoenas and other oversight.
Examples
The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.
Every president since George Washington has taken executive privilege seriously. Every Republican president has.
He pointed out that if Mr. McGahn did show up but Mr. Trump then invoked executive privilege to block him from answering specific questions, the same matter would end up right back in court.
In the 1970s, President Ford asserted executive privilege over national security letters relating to wiretaps that a congressional committee had subpoenaed from AT&T.
Cox immediately subpoenaed the tapes, as did the Senate, but Nixon refused to release them, citing his executive privilege as president, and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena.
If the Senate fails to subpoena Bolton — and Trump said Friday in an interview on Fox that he might invoke executive privilege to block Bolton’s testimony — Pelosi said it was “not excluded” that the House might then move to subpoena him.