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Rh that law. Second, even if the PRA process were available to Plaintiff, it does not follow that he could successfully assert executive privilege against the Executive Branch. To the contrary, the PRA makes clear that it does not expand the scope of executive privilege. See 44 U.S.C. § 2204(c)(2) (“Nothing in this Act shall be construed to confirm, limit, or expand any constitutionally-based privilege which may be available to an incumbent or former President.”). As just discussed, the only time executive privilege was asserted against the Executive Branch by a former President, the Supreme Court rejected it. Nixon v. GSA, supra.

These principles resolve the former President’s request for a special master. As in Nixon v. GSA, this case involves potential assertions of executive privilege by a former President against the “Executive Branch in whose name the privilege is invoked.” 433 U.S. at 447–48. This case does not implicate any disclosure outside the Executive Branch, and the review of the records at issue is being conducted “by personnel in the Executive Branch sensitive to executive concerns.” Id. at 451; see also id. at 444 (“[I]t is clearly less intrusive to place custody and screening of the materials within the Executive Branch itself than to have Congress or some outside agency perform the screening function.”). Accordingly, even in a case where records might be withheld from the public pursuant to a valid assertion of privilege, there would not be a basis for withholding them from review by the Executive Branch itself in pursuit of its core executive functions.

Even if a former President could in some circumstances assert executive privilege against the Executive Branch, no such assertion would be valid here.

In any event, even if there could be some extraordinary circumstance in which a former President could validly assert executive privilege against the Executive Branch itself, this case plainly would not qualify. The Executive Branch is reviewing the records at issue in furtherance of two core executive functions: investigating the potential unlawful handling of