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This piece by @woodruffbets spins out what the White House lawyers and their allies imagine to be the mechanism by which they will stifle the Mueller findings, assuming they take the form of some kind of report that contains material plausibly covered by executive privilege.
Here is the simple reason why it won't work:
Even assuming that the executive privilege claims are valid and will be upheld and are sustainable in the face of the political pressure the administration will receive on the subject, and that is a heck of an assumption, executive privilege does not cover conclusions.
It covers only information involving communications between the president and his staff. So let's leave aside the legal defects in the president's theory of executive privilege and assume arguendo that it has legs. And let's think about what it would look like if operationalized.
The result of it would not be the squelching of the report. It would be the squelching of *certain information in the report*, but not its conclusions--and not all of the evidence.
So imagine now a Mueller report coming with the conclusions intact, some evidence visible, and presidential communications all redacted. Is that a good deal for the president?
Consider that the president's lawyers would be largely unable to discuss the president's conduct or any communications that might be contained in those redactions for fear of waiving the privilege.
The result, in other words, would be the release of Mueller's conclusions in a fashion that would be essentially impossible to rebut or address.
The president would not be able to argue that there was no evidence to support the conclusions. Because he would be sitting on that evidence, whose existence would be very clear to the public.
His argument would have to be: this evidence, about which you know, would be insufficient if you could see it, which you can't because I won't let you. But if I did--which I won't--it would not support Mueller's claim (which you can see) that I did X. So trust me. I'm innocent.
It's not going to fly.
That's all I got.
