Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-715_febh.pdf
Page Number: 18.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

the Watergate complex.  The tapes were subpoenaed by a
Senate committee and the Special Prosecutor investigating 
the break-in, prompting President Nixon to invoke execu-
tive privilege and leading to two cases addressing the show-
ing necessary to require the President to comply with the 
subpoenas.  See Nixon, 418 U. S. 683; Senate Select Com-
mittee, 498 F. 2d 725. 

Those cases, the President and the Solicitor General now 
contend,  establish  the  standard  that  should  govern  the 
House  subpoenas  here.   Quoting  Nixon,  the  President  as-
serts that the House must establish a “demonstrated, spe-
cific  need”  for  the  financial  information,  just  as  the  Wa-
tergate  special  prosecutor  was  required  to  do  in  order  to 
obtain the tapes.  418 U. S., at 713.  And drawing on Senate 
Select Committee—the D. C. Circuit case refusing to enforce 
the Senate subpoena for the tapes—the President and the 
Solicitor General argue that the House must show that the 
financial information is “demonstrably critical” to its legis-
lative purpose.  498 F. 2d, at 731. 

We disagree that these demanding standards apply here.
Unlike the cases before us, Nixon and Senate Select Com-
mittee involved Oval Office communications over which the 
President asserted executive privilege.  That privilege safe-
guards the public interest in candid, confidential delibera-
tions within the Executive Branch; it is “fundamental to the 
operation of Government.”  Nixon, 418 U. S., at 708.  As a 
result, information subject to executive privilege deserves 
“the greatest protection consistent with the fair administra-
tion of justice.”  Id., at 715.  We decline to transplant that
protection root and branch to cases involving nonprivileged, 
private information, which by definition does not implicate 
sensitive Executive Branch deliberations. 

The standards proposed by the President and the Solici-
tor General—if applied outside the context of privileged in-
formation—would risk seriously impeding Congress in car-
rying  out  its  responsibilities.  The  President  and  the