There is nothing worth seeing in Donald Trump’s tax returns and financial records, ok?
We know that, because the president is now prepared to ask the Supreme Court to save Mazars (his accounting firm) from having to comply with a subpoena seeking eight years of documents.
That’s what you do when you have nothing to hide – you defy a subpoena, lose in court, lose again in court, lose a third time in court and then appeal the whole thing to the Supreme Court, whose 5-4 conservative lean comes courtesy of two justices you appointed.
Read more: Trump Can Gun Down Pedestrians In The Street If He Wants, Lawyer Tells Federal Judges
The ruling against Trump by a three-judge panel of the New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday comes a little over a week after the president’s attorneys attempted to argue that Trump’s claim to immunity from prosecution would cover him even if he were to actually live out his famous claim that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody”.
On October 7, a federal judge in Manhattan called the president’s contention that he is immune from criminal investigations “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values”. That ruling made the subpoena (issued in August by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who is conducting a criminal probe) enforceable, but Trump secured a last-minute stay.
A couple of weeks later, on October 23, Denny Chin, one of the three judges on the federal appeals panel reviewing the case, asked Trump’s attorney to clarify his position.
“Local authorities couldn’t investigate? They couldn’t do anything about it?”, Chin asked, inquiring as to what options local police would have if Trump grabbed a rifle, ran out into the middle of the street and gunned down a half-dozen pedestrians for no reason. “Nothing could be done? That’s your position?”, Chin asked.
“That is correct”, Trump’s attorney actually said. “That is correct”. (He said it twice.)
The 2nd Circuit didn’t take that issue up, but the panel did say that even if Trump is immune from prosecution while in office, he can be investigated.
“[It would] exact a heavy toll on our criminal justice system to prohibit a state from even investigating potential crimes committed by him for potential later prosecution”, Judge Robert Katzmann wrote, adding that “presidential immunity does not bar the enforcement of a state grand jury subpoena directing a third party to produce nonâ€privileged material, even when the subject matter under investigation pertains to the president”.
So, it’s off to SCOTUS, where Bart O’Kavanaugh Brett Kavanaugh will get to help decide whether Mazars has to produce the records requested by Vance.
“The decision of the Second Circuit will be taken to the Supreme Court”, Jay Sekulow said in a statement. “The issue raised in this case goes to the heart of our republic. The constitutional issues are significant”.
Yes, Jay, they are. Because your client quite literally argued – through his attorneys – that he can use civilians as target practice whenever it suits him, and nobody could even investigate him, let alone prosecute him.
That’s a “significant” constitutional issue if we’ve ever heard one.
Ruling
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This is scary. If the Senate won’t vote to impeach that’s one broken branch of the government. If the Supreme Court is also compromised the US is in serious trouble. The Trump legacy from hell could last for years.
Imagine if he wins a second term…..
Or just declares martial law and the election non-valid and throws the person who beat him in prison.
Random crap from the internet — hundreds, if-not endless opinions on presidential powers going back through American roots:
“Inherent power! That is a new principle to enlarge the powers of the general government. . . . The partisans of the executive have discovered a third and more fruitful source of power. Inherent power! Whence is it derived? The Constitution created the office of President, and made it just what it is. It had no powers prior to its existence. It can have none but those which are conferred upon it by the instrument which created it, or laws passed in pursuance of that instrument. Do gentlemen mean by inherent power such power as is exercised by the monarchs or chief magistrates of other countries? If that be their meaning, they should avow it.”
XIV
If the framers of the Constitution had intended “the executive power,” in Art. II, Sec. 1, to include all power of an executive nature, they would not have added the carefully defined grants of Sec. 2. They were scholarly men, and it exceeds belief
that the known advocates in the Convention for a jealous grant and cautious definition of federal powers should have silently permitted the introduction of words and phrases in a sense rendering fruitless the restrictions and definitions elaborated by them.
Why say, the President shall be commander-in-chief; may require opinions in writing of the principal officers in each of the executive departments; shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons; shall give information to Congress concerning the state of the union; shall receive ambassadors; shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed — if all of these things and more had already [p229] been vested in him by the general words? The Constitution is exact in statement. Holmes v. Jennison, 14 Pet. 540. That the general words of a grant are limited when followed by those of special import is an established canon, and an accurate writer would hardly think of emphasizing a general grant by adding special and narrower ones without explanation. “An affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority were intended.” Story on the Constitution, § 448. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” Federalist, No. XLIV.
Affirmative words are often, in their operation, negative of other objects than those affirmed, and in this case, a negative or exclusive sense must be given to them, or they have no operation at all. It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible, unless the words require it.
“[n84] It had been denied in the thirteen States before the framing of the Federal Constitution. [n85] The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency, but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy. In order to prevent arbitrary executive action, the Constitution provided in terms that presidential appointments be made with the consent of the Senate, unless Congress should otherwise provide, and this clause was construed by Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist, No. 77, as requiring like consent to removals. [n86] Limiting further executive [p294] prerogatives customary in monarchies, the Constitution empowered Congress to vest the appointment of inferior officers, “as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.” Nothing in support of the claim of uncontrollable power can be inferred from the silence of the Convention of 1787 on the subject of removal. For the outstanding fact remains that every specific proposal to confer such uncontrollable power upon the President was rejected.
[n87] In America, as in England, the conviction prevailed then that the people must look to representative [p295] assemblies for the protection of their liberties. And protection of the individual, even if he be an official, from the arbitrary or capricious exercise of power was then believed to be an essential of free government.”
Also see: The separate opinion of MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS
“A certain repugnance must attend the suggestion that the President may ignore any provision of an Act of Congress under which he has proceeded. He should promote, and not subvert, orderly government. The serious evils which followed the practice of dismissing civil officers as caprice or interest dictated, long permitted under congressional enactments, are known to all. It brought the public service to a low estate and caused insistent demand for reform.
Indeed, it is utterly impossible not to feel that, if this unlimited power of removal does exist, it may be made, in the hands of a bold and designing man of high ambition and feeble principles, an instrument of the worst oppression and most vindictive vengeance.”
This is interesting:
“James Rogan: Trent Lott did handsprings trying to make it go away. Lott finally told Schippers and me, and this is about as precise a quote as I can give you, because it still rings in my ears, “We don’t care if you have photographs of Clinton standing over a dead woman with a smoking gun in his hand. I have 55 Republican senators, seven of whom are up for reelection next year in very tough races. You guys in the House just jumped off a cliff. We’re not following you off the cliff.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/clinton-impeachment/573940/