George Washington had claimed executive privilege on some of his conversations and correspondence with his staff, mainly those related to national security and foreign policy. These claims were based on the grounds that any US president shall have the right to receive candid guidance from experts and advisors in order to properly govern the nation. A proper custom established by George Washington is that presidential secrecy can only be used in the service of the best interest of the public. Conversely, President Nixon gave executive privilege a bad name when he used this power to try to hide information in the Watergate scandal. Since then, executive privilege has been observed with aggregate suspicion by the Congress and also the public.
In 1796, President George Washington set the pattern of executive privilege, when he declined a House request for documents concerning the negotiations between the Jay Treaty and Great Britain. In 1807, during Aaron Burr's separate trial for treason, for the first time the Supreme Court decided the issue. President Thomas Jefferson was ordered by Chief Justice John Marshall to write a letter that might have acquitted the former vice president. The court established the Sixth Amendment right of necessary process did not excused the executive branch (Castillo & Mears, 2012). .
In 1997, President Bill Clinton invoked executive privilege in a civil suit in which a former state employee, Paula Jones, alleged sexual harassment by President Clinton while he was the state governor of Arkansas. Clinton's lawyers argued that during his time in service the president should be immune to civil suits. The Supreme Court solidly denied Clinton's request. The year after, in a similar case, the court also denied a Clinton claim of executive privilege regarding discussions he had had in the Oval Office with White House consultants concerning the Jones case. Consequently, the court heavily relied on the examples set in the Nixon tapes case.
