Posted on 05/12/2020 2:05:49 PM PDT by robowombat
Supreme Court divided over fight for Trump's financial records BY JOHN KRUZEL - 05/12/20 02:53 PM EDT
The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared divided over President Trump’s assertion that the broad powers he enjoys as the nation’s chief executive override subpoenas for his financial records and tax returns.
Trump’s standoff with a trio of Democratic-led House committees and Manhattan prosecutors over his financial paper trail saw the justices raise divergent concerns about presidential immunity, congressional oversight and the power of prosecutors to gather evidence linked to a sitting president.
The first argument in Tuesday’s pair of overlapping cases concerned a slate of congressional subpoenas issued to Trump’s accountants and banks.
The court’s more conservative justices tended to focus on the risk of granting Congress overly broad powers, including the potential for presidential harassment, while liberal justices aired concerns about placing unduly restrictive limits on lawmakers.
One area of apparent common ground, though, was the view that the cases, which asked the justices to draw lines between the governmental powers, had handed them a difficult constitutional task.
"You say there is some power in the House and you think there's a high standard," Chief Justice John Roberts said to Trump’s private attorney Patrick Strawbridge. "I understand the House to concede there is some limit to its authority.”
“So it sounds like at the end of the day this is just another case where the courts are balancing the competing interests on either side,” Roberts said.
The justices’ seeming lack of consensus over some of the dispute’s core constitutional questions suggests they may not achieve the unanimity that marked prior Supreme Court decisions on executive privileges and immunities that handed defeats to Presidents Nixon and Clinton.
But the ruling will nonetheless have profound political implications, particularly as a decision is expected in late June or early July, just months before Election Day. On the legal front, how the justices rule will determine whether Trump can be implicated in a New York state criminal probe.
In Tuesday's first case, a lawyer for the House committees behind the subpoenas — Oversight and Reform, Financial Services, and Intelligence — argued that Trump’s personal and corporate records are needed to assess the adequacy of current ethics and disclosure laws and to probe possible financial misconduct.
Trump's personal attorney countered that the pursuit lacked a legitimate legislative purpose.
“The president's personal papers are not related to anything having to do with the workings of government,” said Strawbridge. “And to empower the committees to simply declare him a useful case study is to open the door to all sorts of oppressive requests.”
“You could have subpoenas directed seeking all of [former President] Jimmy Carter's financial history simply because he used to be a peanut farmer and they want a case study on agriculture,” he added.
Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s more conservative justices, raised concerns to House lawyer Douglas Letter that enforcing the congressional subpoenas would leave presidents vulnerable to harassment by political rivals.
“The end result is that there is no protection whatsoever [if] the only requirement is that the subpoena be relevant to a conceivable legislative purpose,” Alito said.
Trump has also argued that enforcing the subpoenas would encroach on the executive branch’s exclusive power to enforce the nation’s laws, in violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers.
But Justice Elena Kagan, a member of the court’s liberal bloc, emphasized to Trump’s lawyer that a ruling in the president’s favor could hamper Congress’s ability to perform its duties.
“What it seems to me you're asking us to do is to put a kind of 10 ton weight on the scales between the president and Congress and essentially to make it impossible for Congress to perform oversight and to carry out its functions where the president is concerned,” Kagan said.
Some of the liberal justices noted that Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax returns had intensified the battle.
“In so many of these prior cases, there was a cooperation, for example tax returns,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Every president voluntarily turned over his tax returns. So it gets to be a pitched battle here because President Trump is the first one to refuse to do that.”
Trump’s tax returns and financial records have been closely watched since his 2016 presidential campaign. He is the first president in decades to refuse to make any of his tax returns public, noting that he is under audit. The IRS has said audits do not prevent Trump from voluntarily disclosing his returns.
The court’s second argument of the day, a criminal case from New York, could determine whether Trump’s tax returns are ultimately made public.
That case, Trump v. Vance, concerns access to eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns. Cyrus Vance Jr., the Democratic district attorney for Manhattan, previously obtained a grand jury subpoena against Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA.
Vance's office is looking into payments made to silence two women who allege they had affairs with Trump, including adult-film star Stormy Daniels, before he became president. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is serving a prison term in part for his role in the payoff scheme, which violated campaign finance laws and which Cohen said he conducted at the direction of Trump to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump’s private attorneys filed multiple lawsuits to prevent Mazars and two additional third-party financial institutions — Deutsche Bank and Capital One — from disclosing Trump’s financial records.
In both of the cases argued Tuesday, Trump lost every round of the battle in the lower courts.
Much of the day’s second case concerned the extent to which Trump’s assertion of blanket immunity from any criminal process was compatible with prior Supreme Court decisions.
Legal experts say prior Supreme Court decisions concerning a president’s privileges and immunities fall well short of the kind of blanket protection Trump is seeking and that the court has traditionally embraced a case-by-case approach in similar cases rather than a categorical exemption.
In a 1974 ruling against Nixon’s right to shield secret Watergate tapes, a unanimous court held that while presidents can conceal some confidential information under executive privilege, they cannot withhold key evidence from a criminal investigation.
In another unanimous ruling in 1997, the court decided in Clinton v. Jones that presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits for conduct that occurred before entering the White House, allowing a sexual harassment case to proceed against Clinton while in office.
But Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow told the justices that providing Trump temporary immunity in this case was constitutionally required. He also warned that a ruling in favor of the Manhattan district attorney would open the floodgates and invite similar litigation targeting the president.
“The decision would allow any DA to harass, distract and interfere with the sitting president,” said Sekulow, who also represented Trump earlier this year at his Senate impeachment trial and who told the justices that the president “is himself a branch of government.”
Several justices, representing both sides of the court’s ideological spectrum, seemed skeptical of Trump’s sweeping assertion of immunity.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump’s two appointees, pressed Sekulow to explain why the court should quash subpoenas issued to Trump’s third-party financial firms when it allowed the case against Clinton to proceed.
“How is this more burdensome, though, than what took place in Clinton versus Jones? I guess I'm not sure I understand that,” he said, adding: “There, they sought the deposition of the president while he was serving. Here, they're seeking records from third parties.”
Some justices appeared more inclined to adhere to a case-by-case approach. The Justice Department argued for that approach, though it advocated for a version that applied a heightened standard that takes into account the unique circumstances of the American presidency.
Supreme Court to hear blockbuster case on Trump financial records Listen live: Supreme Court hears case on Trump financial records Kagan pressed Trump’s attorney to explain why an absolute exemption made more sense than for the court to steer a middle course.
“You made the point, which we have made, that presidents can't be treated just like an ordinary citizen,” Kagan said. “But it's also true, and indeed a fundamental precept of our constitutional order, that the president isn't above the law.”
Updated at 4:40 p.m.
“How is this more burdensome, though, than what took place in Clinton versus Jones? I guess I’m not sure I understand that,” he said, adding: “There, they sought the deposition of the president while he was serving. Here, they’re seeking records from third parties.””
A good solid swipe at Bill Clinton!
That’s cool to see that at the SCOTUS.
Nothing new here! The communist Democrats always find way to win. When half of the SC are communist, America is in real trouble.
I don’t remember who requested these returns in the first place, and for what reason?
I’m sure it’s just to leak them to the press.
B@stards.
As I understand the law above is the standard for Congress to subpoena Trump's or any ones records. There are supposed to be legislators not frivolous imbeciles.
Assuming the justices see through this nonsense, the commie democrat congress critters are trying to pull off, there is no way they get what the records, as we hate Trump is not a legitimate legislative purpose.
So we’re looking for 5-4?
zSCOTUS was wrong in the Clinton case, IMO.
Why is Gorsuch even trying to compare the seeking of personal tax records from a time before Trump was in office, to seeking the deposition of a sitting President? One has nothing to do with the other.
He's saying what was done to Clinton was way more intrusive than a tax-return request. It's a swipe at Trump.
i would raise the extremely real and likely concern his returns will deliberately be leaked to the media by the democrats.
They have been leaking things to the press for a very long time.
After all we now know. is there anyone here who thinks there’s a chance in Hell that Obama Inc, hasn’t already seen every line of Trumps returns for the past 30+years?
starting the day he questioned BO’s BC
“What it seems to me you’re asking us to do is to put a kind of 10 ton weight on the scales between the president and Congress and essentially to make it impossible for Congress to perform oversight and to carry out its functions where the president is concerned,”
Uh, yeah. That’s what that Constitution thingy was written to do. Separation of powers and all that. Wise Latina my ass.
One sure thing: The Old Bolshevik Biddy won’t recuse herself for her prior, multiple, anti-Trump remarks.
It's not a swipe at anybody. He's asking a logical question about the argument being made. That's his job.
Our only hope is another term for trump and to launch a devastating blow to the evil in this country
The difference is BJ Clinton had a VICTIM- Paula Jones
Trump is just asked for his personal tax returns.
(making him and any business partners potential victims, once liberals get their names)
So....it’s a bit confusing. To me, if there were ‘crimes’ that were involved with Specific tax records, that they had ample evidence of criminal behavior, like with Clinton vs Jones, Then the POTUS shouldn’t be immune.
The key words are “Ample Evidence” and “Specific Records”. Nobody really asked the Questions: 1)What is the Crime that these records would shed light on? 2)What specific records in Trumps ‘Tax Records’ are needed? 3) What strong evidence do they have that releasing the POTUS tax records would solve a ‘criminal offense’.
I SEE NO EVIDENCE of this discussion. Stormy Daniels, doesn’t cut it. Campaign finance, was completely ignored by Obama, not enforced on Hillary and the ‘Clinton Foundations’ ignored for the entire DNC in the last election cycle. Since the SCOTUS didn’t step in to stop Comey, FISA abuse, or any prior campaign finance issues, then they be ‘partisan hacks’ if they do so now. The Supreme Court siding with the Democrats would mean that only CONSERVATIVES are under the rule of law.
To prove this isn’t a ‘fishing’ expedition, as pertains to the POTUS, the standard should be to demonstrate convincingly that a serious real criminal offense occurred. Moreover, if they have that, then a single line from a single year of his Tax records, could verify that information.
The problem is that this IS a FISHING expedition, and they can’t GIVE specifics because they LACK a real and serious crime, or even specific evidence. They are doing it for political reasons, not for Criminal Justice, and the SCOTUS should tell them to pound sand or come back with hard evidence of a crime, and SPECIFIC portions of his TAX records that are needed.
Forgot one thing in my last post.
I suspect that they will find nothing in Trumps records. He is just baiting everyone to out themselves as one sided partisan hacks. Then, when they get it they will say “we forced him to give up his tax records” while they wince that they got nothing and now look like morons. That’s what Trump does.
Better be 5-4, advantage us.
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