{"id":3080,"date":"2020-07-16T13:53:55","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T13:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3080"},"modified":"2020-07-16T13:53:55","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T13:53:55","slug":"the-supreme-court-just-dealt-a-huge-blow-to-congresss-power-to-investigate-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3080","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court just dealt a huge blow to Congress\u2019s power to investigate Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Trump v. Vance<\/em><\/a>, largely maintains the status quo. As Chief Justice John Roberts states in the first line of that opinion, \u201cin our judicial system, \u2018the public has a right to every man\u2019s evidence,\u2019\u201d and \u201csince the earliest days of the Republic, \u2018every man\u2019 has included the President of the United States.\u201d Trump does not enjoy absolute immunity from a state prosecutor\u2019s criminal investigation.” 
…
“The upshot of Trump v. Mazars<\/em><\/a> is that House investigators almost certainly will not see potentially damning records concerning Trump\u2019s finances until after the November election. Mazars<\/em> was also written by Roberts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Mazars<\/em> does not preclude the House from seeing those records eventually, by the time those records become available Trump will almost certainly either be an ex-president, or he will be firmly entrenched in his second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the surface, it is easy to see Mazars<\/em> as a defeat for Trump. The decision was 7-2, with all four of the Court\u2019s liberals joining the majority. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both wrote dissents, where they complain that the majority didn\u2019t do enough to protect Trump from investigation.But make no mistake, Mazars<\/em> is a victory for Trump because it holds that the president enjoys special immunity from congressional investigation enjoyed by no other citizen \u2014 and because it likely shields Trump\u2019s records from the public eye until after the election.”
…
“Eastland <\/em>held that Congress is entitled to gather information \u2014 and to use compulsory subpoenas to gather such information \u2014 whenever that subpoena is \u201cintended to gather information about a subject on which legislation may be had.\u201d So long as the congressional subpoenas sought information on a topic that could plausibly be subject to an act of Congress, those subpoenas were lawful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new rule announced in Mazars<\/em>, however, can be boiled down into four words: \u201cthe president is special.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Roberts, \u201ccongressional subpoenas for the President\u2019s information unavoidably pit the political branches against one another.\u201d He adds that \u201cwithout limits on its subpoena powers, Congress could \u2018exert an imperious controul\u2019 [sic] over the Executive Branch and aggrandize itself at the President\u2019s expense, just as the Framers feared.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\u00a0Mazars\u00a0<\/em>invents new limits on congressional subpoenas targeting the president, and sends the case back down to a lower court to apply this new rule.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n


https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2020\/7\/9\/21318612\/supreme-court-trump-mazars-vance-john-roberts-subpoenas-tax-returns<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Trump v. Vance, largely maintains the status quo. As Chief Justice John Roberts states in the first line of that opinion, \u201cin our judicial system, \u2018the public has a right to every man\u2019s evidence,\u2019\u201d and \u201csince the earliest days of the Republic, \u2018every man\u2019 has included the President of the United States.\u201d Trump does not enjoy absolute immunity from a state prosecutor\u2019s criminal investigation.” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The upshot of Trump v. Mazars is that House investigators almost certainly will not see potentially damning records concerning Trump\u2019s finances until after the November election. Mazars was also written by Roberts.
\nThough Mazars does not preclude the House from seeing those records eventually, by the time those records become available Trump will almost certainly either be an ex-president, or he will be firmly entrenched in his second term.<\/p>\n

On the surface, it is easy to see Mazars as a defeat for Trump. The decision was 7-2, with all four of the Court\u2019s liberals joining the majority. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both wrote dissents, where they complain that the majority didn\u2019t do enough to protect Trump from investigation.<\/p>\n

But make no mistake, Mazars is a victory for Trump because it holds that the president enjoys special immunity from congressional investigation enjoyed by no other citizen \u2014 and because it likely shields Trump\u2019s records from the public eye until after the election.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Eastland held that Congress is entitled to gather information \u2014 and to use compulsory subpoenas to gather such information \u2014 whenever that subpoena is \u201cintended to gather information about a subject on which legislation may be had.\u201d So long as the congressional subpoenas sought information on a topic that could plausibly be subject to an act of Congress, those subpoenas were lawful.
\nThe new rule announced in Mazars, however, can be boiled down into four words: \u201cthe president is special.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Roberts, \u201ccongressional subpoenas for the President\u2019s information unavoidably pit the political branches against one another.\u201d He adds that \u201cwithout limits on its subpoena powers, Congress could \u2018exert an imperious controul\u2019 [sic] over the Executive Branch and aggrandize itself at the President\u2019s expense, just as the Framers feared.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Mazars invents new limits on congressional subpoenas targeting the president, and sends the case back down to a lower court to apply this new rule.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[936,542,119,813,935,528,170],"class_list":["post-3080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-checks-and-balances","tag-congress","tag-investigations","tag-presidency","tag-subpoena","tag-supreme-court","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3081,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions\/3081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}