As I predicted a few days ago, the White House will not try to block James Comey’s public testimony this week.

WH: Trump has "well-established" power on exec privilege but won't "in order to facilitate a swift and thorough examination of the facts" pic.twitter.com/YW1Q5Xl95N

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) June 5, 2017

The statement basically says “we could have if we’d wanted to.” That is only technically true. The White House could have undoubtedly sandbagged Comey’s testimony this week and could probably have delayed it for several months via court battles. Ultimately, they were going to lose the case because of Trump’s Twitter habit. And it was going to be yet another self-administered sucking chest wound to the administration. So they’ve put the best face on and gone the route that every respected legal analyst has said they would take for the past month, they’ve given Comey permission to testify.