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.
The libs have asserted that DJT has committed a crime, FALSELY, repeatedly. There is no law that mandates the release of tax history. Let them start there. Pass a law instead of going fishing for a potential crime with no evidence to obtain a warrantless search.
Nice try Kagen. What law do you allege Trump thinks he's above? The House has no evidence of a crime being committed. Without evidence of a crime, on what basis is the House entitled to a private citizen's tax returns, much less a President's.
Lawmakers want to have a look at PDJT’s taxes undoubtedly to make sure that he has never paid taxes that Congress cannot reasonably justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers. /sarc
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Send "Orange Man Bad" federal and state government Democrats and RINOs home in November!
Supporting PDJT with a new patriot Congress and state government leaders that will promise to fully support his already excellent work for MAGA and stopping SARS-CoV-2 will effectively give fast-working Trump a third term in office imo.
Remember in November!
"The “Holy Grail” of organized crime is to control government power to tax." —me
"The power to tax involves the power to destroy, [...]” —Chief Justice John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819.
"The 16th Amendment effectively repealed the involuntary servitude aspect of the 13th Amendment imo, evidenced by unconstitutional federal taxes." —me
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"13th Amendment, Section 1:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude [emphasis added], except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
"16th Amendment:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
"It’s politically correct, under the Democratic Party and its tyrant judges, to use your voting power to make your fellow citizens involuntary servants." —me
"The ill-conceived 17th Amendment not only effectively politically repealed the 3/4 state supermajority requirement of the Constitution’s Article V for ratification of proposed amendments to the Constitution imo, politically correct interpretations of the Constitution now prevailing under Democratic judicial tyranny, but also consider this. That amendment also effectively nullified Congress’s constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers along with the Supreme Court’s clarification of Congress’s limited power to appropriate taxes." —me
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"The constitutionally undefined political parties are basically rival, corrupt voter unions, “union dues” paid by means of unconstitutional federal taxes. Belonging to a political party means that you are a subject, not a member.” —me
"Patriots need to support PDJT in demanding that Congress moves "April 15" tax day to the day before election day." —me
"The smart crooks long ago figured out that getting themselves elected to federal office to make unconstitutional tax laws to fill their pockets is a much easier way to make a living than robbing banks." —me
"Federal career lawmakers probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit bribes for putting loopholes for the rich and corporations in tax appropriations laws, Congress actually not having the express constitutional authority to make most appropriations laws where domestic policy is concerned. Such laws are based on stolen state powers and uniquely associated stolen state revenues." —me
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
If he does have to give up his tax records, can tax records from swamp dwellers also be disclosed? They better be careful what they ask for. From what I can see there are a LOT of gaters out there.
In both of the cases argued Tuesday, Trump lost every round of the battle in the lower courts.
But John Kruzel failed to write exactly why Trump lost every round of the lower court battles. Even though John Roberts has said that the Federal courts are not political, they are.
Case 1, Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP was consolidated with Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG.
Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP
Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG
Case 2, Trump v. Vance
As we can see, these cases have been decided politically, by Clinton and Obama political operatives on the Federal courts.
Apparently, DNC political operative John Kruzel did not see that.
Here’s hoping if he loses, Trump immediately requests the tax returns for the last 10 years of every SC justice, the obamas, every member of the Russia cabal, every democrat congress member, the democrat nut Vance in NY, along with every angry eneMedia member- for the last 10 years.
In that event, Trump would be unsuccessful since the courts would then rule that Trump's request would not have any legitimate purpose. Courts are controlled by the liberals.
Roberts will side with the left. They own him. He is allowed to vote with the right sometimes when it’s not that important but on all the big issues he is reliably on the left. This is a biggie to them.
I think trump should leak them. He says there accurate. He doesn’t do them anyway. Plus he said they are volumes full. That should keep them from screwing up the country for awhile.
Have we seen Obama’s college transcripts, or birth certificate?
I didn’t think so.
Concurrently release SCOTUS tax records.
I read through the entre transcript yesterday. It would appear to me that the biggest sticking point for the non-liberal justices is that there is apparently no limit the plaintiffs could come up with to the amount of harassment that the decision they are asking for would generate. Kavenaugh actually mentioned congress digging around for evidence of jaywalking.
Of course, given the setting, none of the justices or attorneys came right out and said how obviously political this entire case is. It is obvious from the breadth of the information request that they are looking for an unlimited way to dig for dirt in the president’s past. Doesn’t have to be illegal, or even immoral. All they want is something that they can drag out that will produce bad optics for the president. I’m quite sure they could find something, especially with the complexity of modern tax law. They’d find something that is pretty much standard practice that they could drag out and say, “look at this!”
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