If the court can’t get involved in the dispute, then the House committee and full House should pass a rule that those who do not respond to House committee subpoenas can be summarily executed. Let’s see how they feel about that.
Too harsh?
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Fine. Have him dragged in and take custody of his person. Let him appeal from a cell while we seek review from the full court. This is Federalist Society fascism taking root…
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This is exactly the calculation that House leadership would have made by now.
What’s left is to review the calculation in light of today’s written decision; and today’s political landscape.
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In keeping with with recent court packing activity by Mitch and the gang…these are prior appointees but we can expect this kind of action from the courts and DOJ in meaningful cases to come.
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Does anyone really think Don McGahn’s testimony would have revealed anything anyway?
He would’ve just lied and invoked executive privilege at will…
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Time to toss a little inherent contempt at McGann and others. Since the courts says it’s not their place to enforce congressional subpoenas (which is very different from saying they can’t be enforced at all), the courts are basically saying it is between the executive and legislative branches. And since it takes the executive branch to enforce a contempt of Congress via the courts, what choice is left?
I’d like to see that happen. Get McGahn to appear and invoke executive privilege, since that’s clearly adjudicated by the courts.
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Kudos for @irasdad in pointing this out. Schiff and Pelosi were right.
In my opinion much of this carping about the Democrats is the result of us all being (myself included) a nation of spoiled brats, who, because we are relatively free from “foreign invasion”, let loose the majority of our Civic Engagement and traded it for sports and amusements.
Ill prepared for the Trojan Horse of Donald Trump.
The genius of Trump’s handlers is that they grasped that what should have been well established procedure was really tradition-based mores, which could be shot down in “court”
"Court’ irredeemably Corrupt.
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It seems to me that this gives the House the right to enforce their own subpoenas immediately and without having to go to court or adjudicate through the Justice Department.
If you don’t show up, then the Capital Police come and get you.
All they need is the political will to do it…
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If the courts can’t resolve an interbranch dispute then, who can?
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I am not even close to being a lawyer, so fwiw…in my mind there are two potential branches here:
If “the federal courts” are not the correct venue, does that mean the Supreme Court CAN be the correct venue, and could therefore make a ruling or is it, in the minds of these 2 judges also part of the federal court system and “should” therefore not intervene??
If the decision stands up to and through the Supreme Court, then the ONLY option open when one branch of the government refuses to play nice with the others has to be impeachment and removal of the member in the Executive or Judicial branch. There does not seem to be a remedy other than “the next election” if the Legislative branch refuses to acknowlege the authority of the other 2 branches.
Quite the mess…
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As a lawyer myself, I’m good with that.
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We are either a fascist dictatorship or we are not.
And that is where all the snark stops. Dictatorships’ denizens do not have snark.
They have a gallows humor until they die.
And I am being serious.
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There are 3 types of contempt charges; civil, criminal,and inherent. Civil can take years going through lesser courts. Criminal goes to the JD,aka Barr. Inherent is the only one Congress wholly owns.
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Well, there’s also a principle at stake, yes?
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Why does this matter now? Trump has been acquitted. We already know what Trump’s crimes are. If the pee pee tapes surfaced it wouldn’t have any effect. Trump will do whatever he wants. Nobody is going to stop him.
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And when he asks the court to release him from jail will the court say “The Committee’s moving party’s suit asks us to settle a dispute that we have no authority to resolve.”?
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LOL…majority opinion is basically: “Congress should have to resort to the power of the purse to punish the American public and destroy themselves politically by refusing to fund the gov’t in order to coerce compliance.” In other words, “the Democrats should have to play right into the GOP’s hands.”
They’ll be singing a different tune if we ever take back the WH…of course, they plan to use the courts to prevent that from ever happening, soooo…
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The legislative branch says that it has the right to subpoena executive branch officials. The executive branch says they have the right to ignore said subpoenas. If not the judicial branch, who would have the authority to adjudicate that dispute?
Since most of Trump’s lackeys haven’t testified, executive privilege has (almost) never even been invoked by this admin. They’ve hedged around it, saying that if they testified, they would probably invoke it, but since none have been “allowed” to testify, it’s still an open question if they would actually go there.
So long as they’ve been able dodge the subpoenas, they haven’t actually been tested to see if they would really fall on their swords for Trump.
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Maybe I’m just stupid but what is the court’s purpose if not to settle legal disputs. Is this not a legal dispute?
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Put him in effing jail. Then we’ll see how fast he decides to testify.
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