A president, his congressional opponents, foreign leaders, and the U.S. Supreme Court first tangled over executive privilege toward the end of George Washington’s first term. They are almost certainly headed for a collision again in 2019.

Despite the outrage, the Federalist-dominated Senate approved the treaty by a two-thirds vote. The House doesn’t vote on treaties, but Jeffersonians in the lower chamber moved to refuse to appropriate funds to implement it. To justify this measure, they demanded that Washington send them the instructions he had given Jay, and other documents from the negotiations. On March 30, 1796, Washington, in a presidential message, asserted that “to admit … a right in the House of Representatives to demand, and to have, as a matter of course, all the papers respecting a negotiation with a foreign power, would be to establish a dangerous precedent.”

The House didn’t need the papers for any “purpose under [its] cognizance”; the only possible such purpose, Washington said, would be “that of an impeachment, which the resolution has not expressed.”