In a striking 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a criminal subpoena issued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for President Trump’s financial records as part of a wide-ranging investigation into the Trump organization.
The decision upholding the subpoena marks the first — and potentially only — victory among those clamoring for access to Trump’s tax returns.
Roberts wrote in the opinion that the public has the right to “every man’s evidence.”
Win for the rule of law = Trump is NOT king!
Though too bad the Supremes punted to the lower court wrt to the Congressional access!
Maybe Roberts is concerned about those sinking polls and wants to buttress Trump’s re-election chances but at the same time and he wants to finesse his “legacy”!
Let’s take a listen/read from constitutional professor:
Addendum:
Other entities that need to have their tax returns reviewed would be those tax-exempt megachurches!
Addendum2:
What are the chances that Trump is hiding his tax returns due to him cheating his niece and nephew out of Fred’s estate and that any Russian rubles was just an additional reason?
AND
Is Trump really worth $10 Billion?
Addendum3:
Another Presidential Misconduct?
Leave Me A Loan: Trump’s PPP Scandal Exposed
Addendum4:
So now that Vance will see Trump’s tax return in the near future…
Maybe it is time for him to revisit the Trump SoHo investigation again!
Chiselin’ Trump: “We are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country courts. We will end it now. Today, I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets courts. Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence justice has been quelled restored.”
Craftily done.
The President is not above the law, but we are going to delay investigations into the republican President until he is out of office.
I am going to go out on a limb and say the court got it right. What the house was doing was correct, but the house counsel took an absolutist position, refused to acknowledge limits. So that forced the Supreme Court to lay out a test. That requires a remand. The liberals went along as they did not want a future Republican senate going full Benghazi, and they know the Republicans are more likely to go there.
Doug letter (house counsel) needs to be fired and someone who understands how courts work hired to represent the house.
The Vance case was a great win for accountability. Unfortunately, unless they indict trump and put the details in the indictment, trump gets to hide his taxes through the general election.
P.s. adding a lot more detail to my post:
I have now read both 7-2 majority opinions (by Roberts, joined by the 4 liberals and Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) carefully (earlier just read them quickly). Wanted to give a little perspective.
First, the Vance case (allowing the NY DA to subpoena all of Trump’s records) is a clear win. Given that as Trump has shown, he can control the federal criminal prosecution system via corrupt Attorney General, we really need state authorities to address criminality by a president. Vance (who is a competent guy, with a well run office) now gets the records. The problem is that grand jury records are secret. So Trump’s taxes don’t get released. The only way we see them is if Vance indicts Trump, and puts details into his indictment (what is called a “speaking” indictment). I think this is highly unlikely to happen before the election.
So a win for accountability and democracy, but not necessarily for getting Trump’s taxes before November.
Second, the house “won” but really lost, the case they had requesting Trump’s financial returns. Trump argued he was immune, and the Court quickly rejected that argument.
But, the problem was that the House – lead by a general counsel Douglas Letter who is IMHO a total fool – took absolutist positions. Throughout the litigation they argued that as long as they had a letter laying out a “proper purpose” that Courts could not look further. And when pushed at the oral argument as to what limits there were, Letter who was arguing the case (and should never had been let near the supreme court) said there was no limit.
The Supreme Court does not like no limits. The opinion highlights how the House said no limits, which is a rather direct shot at Letter. And given that republicans have shown a willingness to abuse the congressional investigation process (see Brenghazi) the four democratic judges did not want to empower people who were willing to investigate to embarrass.
So the result was 7-2, Roberts writing, laying out a series of factors to be considered by courts. The problem was that having taken an absolutist position in the lower court (rather than laying out multiple arguments and evidence as skillful litigators do) there was no record for the Supreme Court to affirm the decision, and they had to remand for further proceedings. These will run well past November.
A skillful lawyer would have anticipated the factors the Supreme Court reached for, they are all over the cases, and were simply stated by Judge Roberts as:
"First, courts should carefully assess whether the asserted legislative purpose warrants the significant step of involving the President and his papers. “‘[O]ccasion[s] for constitutional confrontation between the two branches’ should be avoided whenever possible.” Cheney v. United States Dist. Court for D. C., 542 U. S. 367, 389–390 (2004) (quoting Nixon, 418 U. S., at 692). Congress may not rely on the President’s information if other sources could reasonably provide Congress the information it needs in light of its particular legislative objective. The President’s unique constitutional position means that Congress may not look to him as a “case study” for general legislation. Cf. 943 F. 3d, at 662–663, n. 67.
Second, to narrow the scope of possible conflict between the branches, courts should insist on a subpoena no broader than reasonably necessary to support Congress’s legislative objective. The specificity of the subpoena’s request “serves as an important safeguard against unnecessary intrusion into the operation of the Office of the President.” Cheney, 542 U. S., at 387.
**Third, courts should be attentive to the nature of the evidence offered by Congress to establish that a subpoena advances a valid legislative purpose. The more detailed and substantial the evidence of Congress’s legislative purpose, the better. See Watkins, 354 U. S., at 201, 205 (preferring such evidence over “vague” and “loosely worded” evidence of Congress’s purpose). That is particularly true when Congress contemplates legislation that raises sensitive constitutional issues, such as legislation concerning the Presidency. In such cases, it is “impossible” to conclude that a subpoena is designed to advance a valid legislative purpose unless Congress adequately identifies its aims and explains why the President’s information will advance its consideration of the possible legislation. Id., at 205–206, 214–215. **
Fourth, courts should be careful to assess the burdens imposed on the President by a subpoena. We have held that burdens on the President’s time and attention stemming from judicial process and litigation, without more, generally do not cross constitutional lines. See Vance, ante, at 12–14; Clinton, 520 U. S., at 704–705. But burdens imposed by a congressional subpoena should be carefully scrutinized, for they stem from a rival political branch that has an ongoing relationship with the President and incentives to use s-poenas for institutional advantage."
(bolded text is from the opinion, and is the court’s “test”). Not a lot of soaring rhetoric there, just the kind of thing that any decent lawyer would have anticipated, and built a record of. Court lays out a test to judge the issue. The problem is that the Lower Court did not address some/all of these issue, and/or Letter did not address how each of the potentially relevant factors applied to this case in his brief.
So while no Trump’s taxes, I have to say, that they fault of this is the democratic appointed house counsel and whomever is directing him. Part of the problem is a series of committee chairs who are (a) not lawyers (or at least not real lawyers), and (b) sort of old school pols. People like Jerry Nadler, Richard Neil, Elliot Engel, are just not capable of doing the kind of detailed work that say Adam Schiff did in the impeachment. And the result is a hash like what they put before the supreme court.
Put another way, this was not something that the conservative supreme court was going to fix for the democrats.
There is an old saying that “hard cases make bad laws” and unfortunately, the democrats made this a hard case given how they litigated it, and had the Court just given the House untrammeled power to investigate, well the republican controlled senate or house of the future would have used that power to try to do in a democratic president. And given that Republicans are more likely to abuse the power, it is probably good long term that the Supreme Court set down a test and some limits.
By sending the issue over Congressional oversight back to the lower courts for further review, Roberts’ in his decision did exactly what I predicted, delayed Trump’s taxes from being made public until after the election.
“Although the decisions were a defeat for Trump, there is a bright side for Trump. Chances are high that the details of his finances will still remain a secret from the public since grand juries operate confidentially and rarely leak. Had House investigators received Trump’s records, it would have been far more likely that some or all of the information would have leaked before the November election.”
Trump’s unprecedentedly broad argument was met with derision as it made its way past federal court in Manhattan and onwards to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. There, Judge Denny Chin asked Trump attorney William Consovoy whether Trump would be immune from criminal investigation if he were to
shootkill someoneon Fifth Avenueby mishandling a deadly global pandemic while in office.“Nothing could be done, that is your position?” Chin asked.
“That is correct,” Consovoy replied.
FIFY!
Jennifer Jacobs
@JenniferJJacobs
·
DEUTSCHE BANK SAYS WILL COMPLY WITH SUPREME COURT’S DECISION,
reports
So this is going to get good. We might not see anything… yet. But it’s a good day for the good guys.
That’s basically it.
Roberts knows how to thread a needle like a surgeon, I’ll give him that.
The filibuster needs to go and Biden needs to add four more justices.
Meltdown at 1600 Black Lives Matter Plaza ! ! !
h/t@glamelegance
Remanded to lower court. This thing ain’t over yet, but has been safely punted to after the election.
It’s not mentioned here, unless I missed it, but the SC denied the ability of Congress to get the financial documents. That’s a separate decision I suppose, but it sounds like a clear departure from the law that the subpoenas were based on. That’s not a win, for sure.
This decision likely means we won’t see Trump’s documents before the election, which is a loss for Americans…unless Vance is able to turn around an indictment in four months we won’t know what is in there. And, you can bet Trump will continue to try to block this with more legal actions.
Wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the WH right now…
Looks like the recent head injury from a fall had a traumatic effect on Roberts. No longer true for him that once a Republican always a Republican. Mueller take note.
“He’s the President of the United States. He’s a branch of government,” Sekulow argued.
We do not live in a feudal system in which an individual and a branch of government are identified as one and the same. The President is tasked with running a branch of government. There is nothing in the Constitution to suggest that this job assignment allows him to break the law “willy-nilly”, to borrow his counsel’s language.
I do like the “willy-nilly” argument to resist a subpoena. I wonder if anybody else can try this. “Hypothetically, your honor, if I accede to this lawful request, the presumptively corrupt government will badger me to the end of time.”
LOL.
Uhhhhh…DB wants to continue to do bid-ness in the United States, so, yes, it will.
Ouch!
Whether we see this before or after he is thrown out of the WH does not stop the total psychic agony Trump is suffering. He is going to be exposed. The world is going to have proof of his small, ugly shriveled self inside the bloated gasbag.
Justice delayed is justice denied until some indeterminate time after the election.
And the Dem leaders said to the base: “Look that’s what we told you. We can do nothing about a criminal Republican President.”
