Via TPM
Who really thinks that the White House and the telecoms would go along with this so-called "conditional immunity" that congressional Democrats have agreed to if they didn't think they could satisfy the condition?
All they must do is provide a federal district court judge with "substantial evidence" they received a written request from the attorney general or head of an intelligence agency stating the president authorized the surveillance and determined it to be lawful, the Wall Street Journal reports.
How much clearer could they telegraph that such written requests exist?
Late Update: Or as Laura Rozen puts it:
Doesn't that actually endorse and extend to private actors the Nixonian view that if the president says it's legal, it's legal, regardless of what the law says and the Constitution says? Wouldn't that set an awful precedent that an administration could get private actors to do whatever they wanted including breaking the law?
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