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Rh the records, including highly classified records, and assessing the resulting risks to national security. Access to the records is essential to the performance of those functions. And those vital Executive Branch interests far outweigh any burden on the institutional interests the privilege serves to protect—particularly where, as here, the former President has not even attempted to establish any particularized harm from the review of specific records.

In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court held that the need for evidence in a criminal trial outweighed even a sitting President’s assertion of executive privilege over presidential communications. The Court explained that, although the “[t]he interest in preserving confidentiality is weighty indeed and entitled to great respect,” 418 U.S. at 712, assertions of the privilege must also “be considered in light of our historic commitment to the rule of law. This is nowhere more profoundly manifest than in our view that the twofold aim (of criminal justice) is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer,” id. at 708–709 (internal quotations omitted). Ultimately, the Court concluded that “[t]he generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.” Id. at 713.

Similar logic applies here. The records at issue were seized pursuant to a search warrant reflecting a judicial finding of probable cause to believe that they constitute evidence of violations of statutes specifically governing the handling of government records in general and national defense information in particular. See supra at 11–12 (citing 18 U.S.C. §§ 793 and 2071, as well as 18 U.S.C. § 1519). The Executive Branch has a “demonstrated, specific need” for the records at issue, Nixon, 418 U.S. at 713, because the records—and particularly any records marked as classified—are central to the investigation. Indeed, they are the very subject of the relevant statutes. And, even more so than in United States v. Nixon, there is little risk that