On Aug. 10, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) issued an opinion concluding that executive privilege may, in certain circumstances, apply to presidential communications with private advisers outside the executive branch. The opinion, Applicability of Executive Privilege to Presidential Communications with Private Advisers, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Dep’t of Justice (Aug. 10, 2026) (the “Opinion”), states that the presidential communications component of executive privilege may protect communications with “private advisers” when certain conditions are met.
Although OLC opinions do not carry the legal force of Article III court opinions or statutes, they are generally afforded deference by the courts, and they inform executive branch negotiations with congressional committees. This Opinion may thus have meaningful implications for congressional oversight of the private sector, particularly during the upcoming 120th Congress if Democrats retake control of either chamber of Congress. Congressional committees seeking to conduct oversight of the executive branch have historically sought records from private sector entities conducting business with federal officials, precisely because private parties generally lack the constitutional privileges that may apply to the executive branch. This latest Opinion calls that premise into question, and suggests that there may be instances in which non-executive branch employees may enjoy limited constitutional privileges. However, the precise showing necessary—both in the context of congressional oversight negotiations and, if litigated, in court—to plausibly deem private sector communications as constitutionally protected, remains to be seen. We discuss the Opinion, its implications, and additional considerations below.
Summary of the Opinion
Executive privilege is a constitutional privilege rooted in separation-of-powers principles, and the president’s unique constitutional need to protect sensitive official deliberations. One major component of executive privilege is the presidential communications privilege, which protects communications by presidential advisers made in connection with official presidential decisionmaking. The applicability and scope of executive privilege has been a highly contested issue in congressional investigations. Typically, executive privilege assertions have involved executive branch employees and officials.
The Opinion finds that “private advisers,” defined as “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch, whether they be members of the public, state officials, or employees of other branches of the federal government,” may have communications protected by executive privilege. However, there are three criteria that must be satisfied in order for the privilege to apply: the communications must (i) “relate to official presidential decisionmaking,” (ii) “involve or reflect communications with the President or his direct advisers,” and (iii) be “confidential.” The Opinion’s broad definition of “private adviser” raises the possibility that private sector individuals who have engaged with the White House will be deemed “private advisers” under this new Opinion.
While the Opinion presents an expansive view of an implied constitutional authority, it is not necessarily a new development with respect to executive privilege. The Opinion roots its finding in the president’s “implied power [under Article II] to seek and obtain advice from whomever the President deem[s] necessary in order to faithfully execute the laws.” This authority has been invoked by presidents across administrations, in various contexts, to maintain confidentiality over communications between White House officials and individuals outside of the executive branch providing advice and input on policy formation. The Opinion relies on two modern examples to show that the executive branch has previously treated third-party communications as implicating presidential confidentiality interests. The first is the 2007 assertion of executive privilege over communications between the George W. Bush White House and individuals outside the executive branch concerning the dismissal and replacement of U.S. Attorneys. The second is OLC’s 1974 Memorandum, Constitutionality of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (“FACA Memorandum”), finding that legislatively imposed disclosure requirements on federal advisory committees may raise separation of powers concerns and encroach upon the president’s implied constitutional authority to solicit and receive advice.
The Opinion also explains that the rationale underpinning executive privilege—the president’s need for confidential decisionmaking in discharging constitutional functions—is not limited to situations involving federal employees. The Opinion’s central premise is that the President’s constitutional need for advice may extend beyond the formal executive branch, and the Opinion relies heavily on the aforementioned FACA Memorandum, which recognized the president’s implied Article II power to “seek and obtain advice from whomever the President deem[s] necessary” to execute the laws.
Limitations of the Opinion
The Opinion cautions that privilege questions are necessarily context-specific, with the potential application of executive privilege turning on a number of facts and circumstances, including the communication’s content, participants, purposes, and confidentiality. The Opinion therefore does not create a blanket privilege for private-sector actors that have communicated with White House officials. Indeed, the requirement that the communication “relate to official presidential decisionmaking” will likely exclude large swaths of private-sector communications with the executive branch, such as lobbying, which typically involve private benefit rather than public policy decisionmaking. Much will depend on the nature of the communication at issue. A private-sector entity that communicates with the White House to seek private benefit—such as regulatory relief, licensing privileges, procurement opportunities, preferential legislation, or other favorable treatment—will be differently situated from an outside adviser who is actually being consulted for their advice and insight into substantive policy issues by the president in connection with the exercise of Article II authority. Similarly, representatives of companies who communicate with White House officials in their capacity as a corporate representative—as opposed to individual persons—are less plausibly characterized as “private advisers” analogous to President Andrew Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet, a historical precedent cited by the Opinion. That being said, the Opinion notes there will remain substantial ambiguity in this criteria, explaining in a footnote that “[t]he breadth of the President’s discretionary responsibilities under the Constitution and laws of the United States in a broad variety of areas, many of them highly sensitive, frequently makes it difficult to determine which of his innumerable functions encompassed a particular action.”
The Opinion also limits “private adviser” communications subject to executive privilege to communications with the president and his “direct advisers.” This would likely exclude communications with agency personnel generally, or even to non-senior staff within the White House. For this reason, private sector entities that have engaged with agency officials or personnel should not assume that such communications would be protected from disclosure.
While the Opinion does not itself define “direct advisers,” this concept has been developed through prior caselaw to generally include the president’s immediate White House advisers and, in certain circumstances, members those advisers’ staff with “broad and significant responsibility” for formulating policy advice for the president. However, the inquiry, like much surrounding executive privilege, will necessarily be fact-specific; by the same logic positing that the president’s constitutional prerogative to seek advice is “not limited by the employment status of the adviser,” an individual’s job title will not necessarily mean that their communications are categorically subject to executive privilege.
The Opinion also leaves ambiguous an important question about communications between “private advisers” and White House officials not involving the president directly. The Opinion acknowledges that communications among presidential advisers made to prepare advice for the president may be privileged even if not sent directly to the President, but explicitly states that because OLC has been asked only to opine on the president’s own communications with “private advisers,” the Opinion “do[es] not have occasion to address . . . the protections that might apply to other White House officials’ communications with private persons.” Given that many private sector entities wondering whether they qualify as “private advisers” may have communicated with senior White House officials, rather than the president directly, this reservation may become significant in the context of negotiations with congressional oversight committees, discussed further below.
Finally, the Opinion only finds that “confidential” communications may be subject to executive privilege. Thus, any communications that have been disseminated beyond a “private adviser” interaction may lose any protections afforded by executive privilege, consistent with traditional principles of waiver.
Implications for Private Sector Subjects of Congressional Investigations
As a practical matter, the Opinion removes the automatic presumption that private-sector communications enjoy no constitutional privileges rooted in separation of powers that might shield them from congressional oversight requests. Correspondingly, the Opinion may create an incentive for private parties that could plausibly be characterized as “private advisers” to consult with the executive branch in connection with congressional requests for those communications. That consultation may be appropriate in some circumstances and give private parties another tool in negotiations with congressional committees. However, to the extent a protracted consultation process impedes a target’s ability to respond to oversight requests in a timely manner, committee staff may view this as inappropriately hindering their oversight efforts and attempt to escalate requests where they otherwise might not do so. It also remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will seek to leverage the Opinion to object to congressional oversight of the private sector more broadly, in situations untethered to plausible applications of executive privilege.
The applicability and persuasiveness of the Opinion in the context of congressional oversight requests will also be highly fact-specific. As noted earlier, the purpose, substance, and participants involved in a communication will bear on whether a third party can plausibly even suggest they qualify as an “outside adviser.” By way of illustration, a corporate entity that proactively lobbied White House officials in an effort to secure a benefit, such as a policy waiver or exemption, will likely be unable to plausibly argue that such communications are protected by executive privilege; whereas an individual who communicated with the same White House officials after being solicited for their knowledge on a substantive policy issue would more plausibly be able to argue executive privilege applied.
How congressional committees treat the Opinion in the context of investigations into private sector entities also remains to be seen. The ease with which the Opinion can be applied to the facts will likely influence how much weight congressional committees give the Opinion during accommodations negotiations. A narrowly tailored privilege assertion over confidential communications with the president or his close advisers, directly reflecting presidential decisionmaking and not concerning any private benefit, will likely receive a different response than a broad attempt to shield all communications between a company and White House intermediaries.
How the Opinion Will Likely Come into Play
While the Opinion is interesting as an academic matter, private sector entities may wonder how it will impact them in practice. The most common scenario for the Opinion to come into play would be in the context of a voluntary congressional oversight request for a target’s communications with White House officials. In this posture, targets typically negotiate with committee staff to narrow the scope of the requests, or prioritize those requests most easily addressed. Following OLC’s Opinion, targets may now also seek to consult with executive branch officials on any subset of communications that might plausibly fit within the Opinion’s criteria for private advisers to the president.
However, in a voluntary cooperation-and-negotiation posture, the degree of deference congressional staff will afford a target may vary. Particularly if the oversight request seeks materials that would not logically be thought of as providing policy-focused advice to the president or his close advisers, there is a significant chance congressional staff will not entertain a request for consultation with the executive branch and seek to escalate voluntary requests through subpoena. Congressional staff may also seek a privilege log to assess the plausibility of any claims of executive privilege. Even further, committees may reject the premise that the opinion controls their investigation and seek to litigate whether the Opinion applies to the documents at issue or argue that their legislative need for the information outweighs any assertion of executive privilege flowing from a target’s status as a “private adviser.” Crucially, OLC opinions represent the executive branch’s view of its own rights and obligations; they are not determinations by an Article III court, and do not carry the force that duly enacted legislation does. Courts may thus consider OLC’s reasoning, but they are not bound to adopt it, and Congress will almost certainly take its own preferred view of the scope of its investigative authority.
Additional Considerations
The possibility that executive privilege may apply to private-sector communications is also only the beginning, not the end, of the inquiry. While the specter of executive privilege may color negotiations with congressional staff while in a voluntary posture, if congressional staff escalate requests to subpoena demands, targets of an investigation that might be deemed “private advisers” will need several steps to occur before executive privilege could excuse noncompliance with a congressional subpoena.
First, executive privilege must in fact be invoked. Executive privilege belongs to the president and must be asserted by the president or an official authorized to act on the president’s behalf. A private party cannot simply declare that its communications are privileged and refuse to comply on that basis alone. Moreover, as explained here, recent D.C. Circuit precedent crystalizes the importance of observing process when relying on executive privilege to excuse subpoena obligations.
Second, the invocation of executive privilege may not, in and of itself, excuse an obligation to comply with a valid congressional subpoena. The invocation of executive privilege must be balanced against Congress’ need for the information sought, and there may be instances in which an assertion of executive privilege is overcome by a committee’s need for the requested documents or information. If a committee insists that its need for the information overcomes the assertion of privilege, the dispute may proceed through a number of political and legal tools available to Congress, including civil enforcement of the subpoena via litigation, or citing the defaulting entity for criminal contempt of Congress.
A private witness often cannot obtain pre-enforcement judicial review of a congressional subpoena because the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause generally bars suits challenging legislative acts. As a result, a witness may be forced to raise executive privilege as a defense only if the committee sues to enforce the subpoena or as a defense in a prosecution for criminal contempt. Finally, criminal contempt of Congress charges are presently assessed on a strict liability basis; all that is required is deliberate noncompliance with a valid subpoena. A good-faith but mistaken belief that executive privilege applied does not provide a defense against contempt of Congress charges. For private companies, that strict liability framework matters: if a company refuses to comply because it mistakenly believes its communications are subject to executive privilege, and a court later concludes that executive privilege did not apply, was not properly invoked, or did not outweigh the congressional committee’s need for the information sought, the company may still face criminal exposure despite having acted on that mistaken legal view.
The OLC Opinion does not eliminate the risks private parties face when responding to requests for their communications with the executive branch, though it does alter the negotiating and consultation environment. Private-sector entities with substantial White House interactions may now have a more developed executive branch theory for arguing that at least some communications are constitutionally protected. Congressional committees, in turn, are likely to test the limits of that theory—both in negotiations and, where the stakes justify it, in court or through criminal contempt citations.
