LaxPower Back-Up Stick

At least one good thing came out of this case. It permanently derailed Chris Christie’s political future.

njbill wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 12:35 pm At least one good thing came out of this case. It permanently derailed Chris Christie’s political future.

Permanently? I just crossed my fingers and tossed salt over my shoulder....

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... r-christie

Very conflicted over this case, but if Gorsuch said so, I am good with it. Still, Chris Christie is a buffoon. And why can these folks lie and not be prosecuted? a fan keeps telling me that this is a crime?

seacoaster wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 1:17 pm

njbill wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 12:35 pm At least one good thing came out of this case. It permanently derailed Chris Christie’s political future.

Permanently? I just crossed my fingers and tossed salt over my shoulder....

I think so. The only logical office for him to run for in New Jersey would be senator, and he has zero chance of winning there. I don’t think he is electable as president, either. Highly doubt anybody would want him as vice president. I suppose someone could give him a cabinet post.

Peter Brown wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 2:13 pm https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... r-christie

Very conflicted over this case, but if Gorsuch said so, I am good with it. Still, Chris Christie is a buffoon. And why can these folks lie and not be prosecuted? a fan keeps telling me that this is a crime?

Read the Court’s opinion. It’s pretty clear.

seacoaster wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 3:25 pm

Peter Brown wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 2:13 pm https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... r-christie

Very conflicted over this case, but if Gorsuch said so, I am good with it. Still, Chris Christie is a buffoon. And why can these folks lie and not be prosecuted? a fan keeps telling me that this is a crime?

Read the Court’s opinion. It’s pretty clear.

why bother, when Fox will tell him what to think?

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 7:53 pm

seacoaster wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 3:25 pm

Peter Brown wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 2:13 pm https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... r-christie

Very conflicted over this case, but if Gorsuch said so, I am good with it. Still, Chris Christie is a buffoon. And why can these folks lie and not be prosecuted? a fan keeps telling me that this is a crime?

Read the Court’s opinion. It’s pretty clear.

why bother, when Fox will tell him what to think?

So true. He’s very conflicted and hasn’t read the decision. Sigh....

A good article canvassing the very high stakes of the cases and issues posed by them. To some of you, the authors will have "TDS," and will be "sore losers." Folks who understand -- and I guess care about -- republican government will appreciate the perspective:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opin ... ticleShare

"On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear one of the most consequential cases ever considered on executive privilege. Trump v. Vance concerns a subpoena issued by the Manhattan district attorney to President Trump’s accountants demanding the release of tax returns and other financial documents to a grand jury.

What is at stake is no less than the accountability of a president to the rule of law.

Mr. Trump claims that a president has “temporary absolute immunity,” meaning he cannot be criminally investigated while in office. Indeed, in oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, his lawyers said that if the president were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, he could not be investigated or indicted until after he left office.

If the justices endorse this extreme view, they will make it impossible to hold this president, and all future presidents, answerable in courts for their actions.

Mr. Trump’s legal position contradicts clear Supreme Court precedent. In U.S. v. Nixon, a unanimous Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over Oval Office tapes subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. In Clinton v. Jones, a unanimous court held that a sitting president can be forced to testify in response to a subpoena in civil litigation. Taken together, these cases make it clear that the president is not immune from investigation, whether criminal or civil, while he is in office.

Mr. Trump’s claims of absolute immunity are even weaker than the assertions by Presidents Nixon and Bill Clinton. The subpoena was issued by a state, rather than a federal prosecutor. The 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows states a certain degree of autonomy in investigating and prosecuting crimes. Although grand jury proceedings are secret, Mr. Vance is probably also investigating whether the president’s company, the Trump Organization, falsely accounted for hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 election to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump. To deny New York the right to exercise its “police powers” over serious financial crimes should give the court’s conservative justices pause.

In addition, the subpoena was not issued to Mr. Trump, but to Mazars, his accountants. Mr. Trump maintains that the immunity of a sitting president is so strong that it extends to his entire business empire and even to third-party businesses that possess his personal information. By this logic, President Clinton could have blocked a subpoena to Monica Lewinsky’s dry cleaner, had she had one, to prevent it from handing over the infamous blue dress before laundering to the independent counsel investigating him.

Mr. Trump’s legal team asserts that federal law pre-empts state law, arguing that his immunity descends directly from the president’s constitutional authority under Article II of the Constitution. We filed an amicus brief in the case opposing this sweeping assertion of presidential immunity, on the grounds that the language of Article II, the history of its drafting and its subsequent interpretation by federal courts contradict Mr. Trump’s interpretation.

Moreover, his claim conflicts with the administration’s position in another recent Supreme Court case over states’ rights, Kansas v. Garcia. The administration’s solicitor general had sided with Kansas against an immigrant’s claim that federal immigration law prevented Kansas from prosecuting him for identity theft.

The same should apply in Trump v. Vance: The Constitution gives the Manhattan district attorney broad latitude to investigate possible financial misconduct of businesses headquartered in New York unless federal law expressly forbids it. No federal law does.

The authorities usually cited for the proposition that a sitting president cannot be indicted are two Justice Department memorandums. Rather than offering a legal analysis based on Article II, the memos are largely pragmatic, advising that it would be unwise to distract a president with legal processes when he needs to focus on the national interest. As such, these memorandums are merely advice to Justice Department prosecutors. They are not binding in any way on state prosecutors.

In a March 27 brief to the court, the president’s lawyers provided a new twist — that it is even more important not to distract the president given the Covid-19 crisis, as “the nation requires the president’s undivided attention.” But as Justice Antonin Scalia observed in the oral arguments in Clinton v. Jones, when a president is so busy “that he’ll never be seen playing golf for the rest of his administration,” then, and only then, should the court worry whether subpoenas would interfere with his ability to do his job.

Requiring Mr. Trump’s accountants to comply with the New York subpoena surely would not interfere with the president’s management of the Covid-19 crisis, if he has bothered to manage it at all. Even President Franklin Roosevelt would have had no immunity argument had he faced a similar third-party subpoena after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

In a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article, Justice Brett Kavanaugh proposed that Congress enact a statute that would immunize the president from criminal investigation. By suggesting the need for such a law, Justice Kavanaugh implicitly acknowledged that the Constitution alone does not establish presidential immunity. This is the same Brett Kavanaugh, by the way, who sent a memo to his boss at the time, the Whitewater independent counsel, Ken Starr, explaining why he was “strongly opposed” to giving President Clinton any “break in the questioning” in preparing for his deposition on his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, and who drafted a series of graphic questions for Mr. Starr to ask the president.

Mr. Trump is already making dangerous headway with his theory of absolute immunity. In Committee on the Judiciary v. McGahn, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Congress cannot enforce its subpoenas through the federal courts. Senate Republicans relied on the theory of “absolute testimonial immunity” when they refused to call witnesses in the impeachment trial.

It is also troubling that the president has availed himself of the “unitary executive theory” in declaring himself the “chief law enforcement officer” of the country, thus asserting a right to ignore the traditional independence of the Justice Department.

If the Supreme Court sides with Mr. Trump in the Vance case and agrees with his other assertions of executive authority, here is where presidential accountability will stand: A sitting president cannot be prosecuted or investigated through the authority of state or federal courts, and he cannot be investigated by Congress or tried in a meaningful way upon impeachment in the Senate. And under Mr. Trump’s broad theory of his authority over the executive branch, a president will be able to press federal agencies into service to hide corruption from public view.

We expect the pull of history, precedent and logic will give the Supreme Court the wisdom to defend the institutions of accountability for our political leaders and safeguard the rule of law."

Good article. Thanks for posting.

Under Trump’s theory, if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, the cops couldn’t interview eyewitnesses, they couldn’t pick up shell casings, they couldn’t conduct forensics tests on the gun he used, etc. Not only is the argument frivolous, it is dangerous.

njbill wrote: ↑Fri May 08, 2020 10:43 am Good article. Thanks for posting.

Under Trump’s theory, if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, the cops couldn’t interview eyewitnesses, they couldn’t pick up shell casings, they couldn’t conduct forensics tests on the gun he used, etc. Not only is the argument frivolous, it is dangerous.

From the Democratic mind:

Joe Biden could rape ME in the middle of Fifth Avenue and I would still vote for him before I would vote for Trump or Sanders. #ForReal

https://twitter.com/sandyknauer/status/ ... 78304?s=20

Pete, you do see that the two are entirely unrelated, right? Just more “Pete humor.”

More on the cases to be argued this week:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ose-court/

"Twenty-six years ago, I published my first op-ed. Entitled “‘No Man in This Country … Is Above the Law,’” it addressed news reports that President Bill Clinton planned to claim an immunity from having to respond to Paula Jones’s sexual harassment suit. “In a case involving his private conduct,” I wrote, “a President should be treated like any private citizen. The rule of law requires no more — and no less.”

The piece led to my ghostwriting briefs for Jones, including a Supreme Court brief two years later. The Supreme Court agreed unanimously that Jones could proceed, and, like the op-ed, quoted from the Founders’ debates about the status of the president: “Far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment.” Which meant that while a president could be impeached for official misconduct, he “is otherwise subject to the laws” — and therefore could be sued — “for his purely private acts.”

I couldn’t have imagined then that another president would challenge that proposition. Then again, I couldn’t have imagined President Donald Trump.

But here we are. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear telephonic arguments in three cases addressing whether Trump can keep his tax and financial information from being disclosed, whether from Congress or criminal prosecutors. In Trump v. Vance, which involves a New York state grand jury investigation, Trump’s lawyers argue that, even when it comes to purely private conduct, the presidency insulates him from the legal process.

The case arises from a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization, and it seems there’s plenty worth examining: whether, as suggested by extensive reporting in this newspaper and other outlets, Trump’s businesses may have dodged taxes. And whether Trump’s hush-money payments, made through his lawyer Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, violated state law. (Cohen pleaded guilty to federal crimes arising from those payments, which the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said were made “at the direction of Individual-1” — Trump.)

The state grand jury subpoenaed the Trump Organization and Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, seeking tax returns and financial records. Trump sued to block the subpoena to Mazars — on the ground that he’s president. The lower federal courts rejected his pleas, and now he’s in the Supreme Court. Where he will lose — or should.

To say Trump’s argument is frivolous demeans frivolity. Clinton v. Jones dictates the result: The subpoenaed documents have nothing to do with Trump’s presidential duties — zip. That alone does it.

But Trump’s case is even weaker than Clinton’s. At least Clinton was being sued personally. He ultimately had to give evidence himself, which he did (infamously) at a deposition. But because the suit had nothing to do with presidential duties, the Supreme Court said it could proceed.

Here, Trump hasn’t been charged with or sued for anything. He’s not being required to do anything. The subpoenas have been directed at his company and his accountants. They don’t require his time or attention.

Trump’s position stupefies. In essence: Authorities can’t investigate anything touching his personal affairs — including, ahem, payments to pornographic actresses — because he’s president. Think of the logic: Not only does the president enjoy a personal constitutional immunity — his businesses do, too.

It doesn’t matter that Trump challenges a criminal inquiry, while Jones involved a civil suit. Whether a sitting president can be indicted remains unsettled, but Trump hasn’t been charged. In fact, presidents have given evidence in criminal matters many times — including ones touching them personally. Chief Justice John Marshall ordered President Thomas Jefferson to produce documents in Aaron Burr’s treason case. A unanimous Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes, and rejected a claim of presidential privilege — in a case in which Nixon was named an unindicted co-conspirator. Clinton provided grand jury and criminal trial testimony in the Whitewater and Lewinsky investigations — matters in which he was potentially a target.

Trump complains nonetheless that letting 50 states conduct investigations involving presidents would endanger the presidency, as well as federal supremacy. A short answer is one the court gave in Jones, where Clinton raised the specter of countless private plaintiffs bringing meritless suits: Courts can address vexatious litigation case by case, and if that doesn’t suffice, Congress can legislate a fix.

A more fundamental answer, though, may be found in an amicus curiae brief in the Vance case, a brief submitted by the Protect Democracy Project and joined by me and 36 other conservatives: “The Constitution is concerned with the supremacy of federal law, not the supremacy of federal officials.”

Likewise, the Constitution is concerned with protecting the presidency, not the person who happens to be the president. That’s because no one in this country is above the law. The Supreme Court is now called upon to teach that lesson once again — even if Trump will likely never learn it."

Very good article. Thanks for posting.

Ashley Feinberg at Slate gives her in-depth analysis as to who she thinks the mystery SCOTUS flusher might be.....

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tream.html

"Investigation: I Think I Know Which Justice Flushed
Someone on the Supreme Court livestreamed a bathroom session. The evidence suggests a particular culprit."

Take a look at some of the cases relisted by the Court. Umm, interesting, huh?

https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/05/reli ... were-guns/

"After the Supreme Court denied as moot the closely watched Second Amendment case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, New York, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief opinion concurring in the dismissal to note that he shared the concerns of dissenting justices that the lower courts were misapplying the court’s Second Amendment precedents. He wrote that “[t]he Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.” That week, the court released 10 Second Amendment cases it had been holding for the New York case. This week, it has relisted every one of them.

The 10 cases address a host of issues, ranging from the constitutionality of the federal ban on interstate handgun sales, to whether the Second Amendment guarantees a right to carry firearms outside the home for self-defense, to the constitutionality of various states’ and localities’ firearm restrictions. We should know next Monday which of them is plenary grant material.

That’s it. That’s the post. The court has a conference scheduled for every week until the end of June, so we’ll be busy going into the final stretch. In the meantime, stay safe!

New Relists

Mance v. Barr, 18-663
Issue: Whether prohibiting interstate handgun sales, facially or as applied to consumers whose home jurisdictions authorize such transactions, violates the Second Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Rogers v. Grewal, 18-824
Issues: (1) Whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a firearm outside the home for self-defense; and (2) whether the government may deny categorically the exercise of the right to carry a firearm outside the home to typical law-abiding citizens by conditioning the exercise of the right on a showing of a special need to carry a firearm.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Pena v. Horan, 18-843
Issue: Whether California’s Unsafe Handgun Act violates the Second Amendment by banning handguns of the kind in common use for traditional lawful purposes.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Gould v. Lipson, 18-1272
Issues: (1) Whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a firearm outside the home for self-defense and (2) whether the government may deny categorically the exercise of the right to carry a firearm outside the home to typical law-abiding citizens by conditioning the exercise of the right on a showing of a special need to carry a firearm.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Cheeseman v. Polillo, 19-27
Issue: Whether states can limit the ability to bear handguns outside the home to only those found to have a sufficiently heightened “need” for self-protection.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Ciolek v. New Jersey, 19-144
Issue: Whether the legislative requirement of “justifiable need,” which, as defined, does not include general self-defense, for a permit to carry a handgun in public violates the Second Amendment.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Worman v. Healey, 19-404
Issue: Whether Massachusetts’ ban on the possession of firearms and ammunition magazines for lawful purposes unconstitutionally infringes the individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Malpasso v. Pallozzi, 19-423
Issue: In a challenge to Maryland’s handgun carry-permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Culp v. Raoul, 19-487
Issue: Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms requires Illinois to allow qualified nonresidents to apply for an Illinois concealed-carry license.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Wilson v. Cook County, 19-704
Issues: (1) Whether the Second Amendment allows a local government to prohibit law-abiding residents from possessing and protecting themselves and their families with a class of rifles and ammunition magazines that are “in common use at [this] time” and are not “dangerous and unusual”; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit’s method of analyzing Second Amendment issues – a three-part test that asks whether a regulation bans (1) weapons that were common at the time of ratification or (2) those that have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia and (3) whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense – is consistent with the Supreme Court’s holding in District of Columbia v. Heller."

One of the byproducts of the Bush v. Gore decision is that Bush, instead of Gore, got to appoint two justices, who turned out to be Alito and Roberts. (This assumes Al Gore would’ve won a second term.) Had that happened, Heller no doubt would have been decided the other way, and Justice Stevens’ brilliant dissent would’ve been the majority opinion.

Kismet wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 12:45 pm Ashley Feinberg at Slate gives her in-depth analysis as to who she thinks the mystery SCOTUS flusher might be.....

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tream.html

"Investigation: I Think I Know Which Justice Flushed
Someone on the Supreme Court livestreamed a bathroom session. The evidence suggests a particular culprit."

What a fun read!

Adam Liptak in the Times about today's -- this morning's -- arguments:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/p ... e=Homepage

"It seems that every 23 years, or about once in a generation, the Supreme Court considers whether presidents must abide by the rules that govern other citizens. In 1974, it unanimously required President Richard M. Nixon to turn over tapes of conversations in the Oval Office. Twenty-three years later, in 1997, it unanimously required President Bill Clinton to respond to a sexual harassment suit.

On Tuesday, almost exactly 23 years after the ruling in the Clinton case, the court will confront an equally significant showdown, this one over President Trump’s efforts to block demands from two House committees and New York prosecutors for his tax returns and other financial information.

The earlier cases were argued in the courtroom, with only those attending able to hear them live. Tuesday’s arguments will be heard by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the public will be able to listen in.

The cases will test the Supreme Court, which is unlikely to produce the consensus achieved by the justices in the earlier disputes, in which the appointees of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Clinton all voted against the presidents who had put them on the court. Mr. Trump has appointed two members of the current court, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Mr. Trump, represented by private lawyers, has made broad claims in the cases, including that he may not be criminally investigated as long as he remains in office. But the justices will also be concerned about the possibility of investigations driven by partisanship rather than a legitimate need for information.

The cases concern subpoenas from Manhattan prosecutors and House committees seeking information from Mr. Trump’s accountants and bankers, not from the president himself. The firms have indicated that they will comply with the subpoenas unless the Supreme Court rules that they may not.

Had prosecutors sought evidence from Mr. Trump himself, there was at least a possibility that he would try to defy a Supreme Court ruling against him, prompting a constitutional crisis.

One of the subpoenas was directed to Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat. It arose from an investigation by the office into hush-money payments to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. The president has denied the relationships.

It was in the case from Manhattan that Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that he was beyond the reach of the criminal justice system so long as he remained in office.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, rejected Mr. Trump’s request to block the subpoena in a narrow ruling, saying only that state prosecutors may require third parties to turn over a sitting president’s financial records for use in a grand jury investigation.

Mr. Trump has fought hard to shield his tax returns from scrutiny, for reasons that have been the subject of much speculation. In a footnote to the Second Circuit’s decision, Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, said that Mr. Trump’s break with his predecessors’ practice was significant.

“We note that the past six presidents, dating back to President Carter, all voluntarily released their tax returns to the public,” Judge Katzmann wrote. “While we do not place dispositive weight on this fact, it reinforces our conclusion that the disclosure of personal financial information, standing alone, is unlikely to impair the president in performing the duties of his office.”

The other subpoenas the Supreme Court will consider on Tuesday are from House committees seeking various kinds of financial information that they say will aid them in their oversight and legislative responsibilities.

One of them, from the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees, was addressed to two financial institutions that did business with Mr. Trump, Deutsche Bank and Capital One. The committees have sought an array of financial records related to the president, his companies and his family.

The records sought from Deutsche Bank — which for two decades was the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump — extend far beyond the president’s tax returns. The subpoenas demand that the bank hand over detailed information about the accounts of Mr. Trump, his family and his companies.

That includes information as detailed as any instances of more than $10,000 being transferred in or out of the accounts, and whatever information Mr. Trump provided when he opened accounts, sought loans and received other services.

The subpoenas also cover Deutsche Bank’s internal records, including a number of specific employees’ communications related to the Trump accounts, as well as any materials about employees’ concerns surrounding potentially suspicious activity in those accounts. Those records would most likely shed light on concerns raised by Deutsche Bank anti-money-laundering officers in recent years.

A different three-judge panel of the Second Circuit ordered most of the requested materials to be disclosed. It made an exception for sensitive personal information unrelated to the committees’ investigations.

“The committees’ interests in pursuing their constitutional legislative function is a far more significant public interest than whatever public interest inheres in avoiding the risk of a chief executive’s distraction arising from disclosure of documents reflecting his private financial transactions,” Judge Jon O. Newman wrote for the majority.

Lawyers for the House have told the Supreme Court that the subpoenas are proper.

“Congress has constitutional power to issue a subpoena if the subpoena is related to a valid legislative purpose,” the House lawyers wrote in a brief. “A subpoena relates to such a purpose if it seeks information that will inform Congress on a subject on which legislation could be had.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers responded in a brief that “these subpoenas are no more valid than would be demands for the president’s medical records so Congress may consider health care reform.”

The Supreme Court is dominated by five Republican appointees. But the court’s decisions in the Nixon and Clinton cases did not break along partisan lines.

The Nixon case led to his resignation in the face of mounting calls for his impeachment. The Clinton case led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment, though he survived a Senate vote on his removal.

Read together, the decisions in those two cases — United States v. Nixon in 1974 and Clinton v. Jones in 1997 — suggest that Mr. Trump could face an uphill fight in winning his argument that he is entitled to complete immunity from criminal process of any kind so long as he is in office. But the decisions have less to say about congressional subpoenas, and those cases may more sharply divide the justices."

gonna be interesting...

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 8:54 am gonna be interesting...

It will be, in real-time:

https://cdn.jwplayer.com/players/XGngqbNj-poE3f2TR.html

https://www.c-span.org/networks/?channel=radio