Attorney-Client Privilege When the Client is a Public Official: Litigating the Opening Act of the Impeachment Drama

The divided panel decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in /n re Lindsey, 158 F.3d 1263 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 466 (1998), represented a dramatic shift in that court\u27s thinking on the question whether the attorney-client privilege protects what a government official says to his agency\u27s counsel in confidence. Although the court of appeals in at least four previous decisions had held that a government agency client holds the same privilege any other client would under like circumstances to communicate with counsel in private, the Lindsey court took a quite different view