Trump campaign payments for "command centers" at D.C. hotels could undermine executive privilege claim

That move, in mid-December, smoothed the way for what would eventually be more than $225,000 in campaign payments to firms owned by Kerik and Giuliani — including more than $50,000 for rooms and suites at the posh Willard hotel in Washington that served as a “command center” for efforts to deny Biden the presidency in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The fact that campaign funds were used to finance efforts to subvert Biden’s victory could complicate the former president’s ongoing attempt to use claims of executive privilege to shield documents and testimony from the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6, according to some legal scholars…

The use of campaign funds “further undermines a wildly broad assertion of executive privilege” by Trump, said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor. “Executive privilege is typically limited to the protection of communications involving a president’s official duties — not to those relating to personal or political campaign matters,” Ben-Veniste said.

Conservative lawyer Alan Dershowitz disputed that assessment, claiming that “a lot of things that are done on behalf of an incumbent president are done by campaigns.”