Both parties have been willing to grant the president more authority when it served their purpose. Some of the post-Watergate reforms have not been as effective as reformers anticipated. Howard Bakerwho served as Reagan's last Chief of Staff, was critical of the growth, complexity, and apparent unanswerability of the presidential "court".
The same year, Congress passed the War Powers Act restricting the power of the president to unilaterally wage war without congressional approval - but the Act would be summarily ignored every president onward, beginning in with President Jimmy Carter 's decision to withdraw from a treaty with Taiwan and escalating with President Ronald Reagan 's decision to order the invasion of Nicaragua in Bush in The activities of some Nixon staffers during the Watergate affair are often held up as an example.
The claims do not rely on statues but depend on unchecked executive judgment. Public responses are limited to voting during elections.
To open government to public scrutiny, Congress opened more committee deliberations and enacted the Freedom of Information Act, which allows the public and press to request the declassification of government documents. In the wake of these investigations, the government severely limited CIA operations in the United States and laid down strict guidelines for FBI activities.
Given those considerations, the facts known to us, and the strong public interest in safeguarding the integrity of the criminal justice system, we conducted a thorough factual investigation in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available.
The presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were particularly described as surrounded by "courts" in which junior staffers acted occasionally in contravention of executive orders or Acts of Congress. Indeed, the line between the Trump White House and conservative media outlets has become blurred beyond recognition.
These court battles about witness testimony and document production could last for months or years.