Supreme Court Says New York Prosecutors May Obtain Trump’s Financial Records

9 July, 2020 | Filed under: All News,more news,Opinion,RECENT POSTS,Somali news | Posted by: Abdillahi

President Donald Trump speaks about the Supreme Court rulings, during a roundtable discussion
with members of the Hispanic community in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, July 9, 2020.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday by a 7 to 2 vote that local prosecutors in New York may obtain President Donald Trump’s tax returns and other closely guarded financial records from his accountants and lenders.

But in a separate case, the high court halted efforts by congressional Democrats to subpoena Trump’s and his family’s records, sending the dispute to lower courts for further review.

The mixed rulings amount to a partial defeat for Trump, who for years has doggedly shielded his financial records from congressional and public scrutiny. Trump complained on Twitter that he was being treated differently than past presidents and that he was the victim of a “political prosecution” in New York.

The opinion involving the New York prosecutor’s subpoena is consistent with similar rulings issued by the court against former presidents Richard Nixon in 1974 and Bill Clinton in 1997, according to legal scholars. Nixon was forced to turn over tape recordings of his private conversations and Clinton was compelled to testify in a sexual harassment case.

In this image from video, presiding officer Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts speaks during the impeachment trial…

The ruling doesn’t mean Trump has no legal recourse, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Like any private citizen, Trump may still “challenge the subpoena on any grounds permitted by state law, Roberts wrote.

Roberts and two Trump appointees on the court — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — joined the majority in both decisions. Roberts wrote the majority opinions. The court’s two most conservative justices — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — dissented.

The highly anticipated rulings came in three separate cases concerning subpoenas issued last year for Trump’s financial records.

The first two cases, consolidated under Trump vs. Mazars, involved subpoenas issued by three House committees to Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, as well as to two lenders — Deutsche Bank and Bank One. Those investigations are seeking to determine whether Trump had inflated and deflated certain assets on his financial statements between 2011 and 2013 to reduce his real estate taxes and whether some Trump property deals involved money laundering.

The third case known as Trump v. Vance involves a subpoena issued to Mazars USA for Trump’s tax returns and other records by New York’s top prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. Vance is supervising a grand jury investigation of Trump prompted by revelations of hush money paid to two women — Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who said they had past sexual relationships with Trump.

While all three cases concerned Trump’s financial records, they raised different constitutional questions.

In the House subpoena case, the question was how far Congress can go in investigating a sitting president. The issue in the New York subpoena dispute was whether a local prosecutor could obtain the personal records of a sitting president who otherwise enjoys immunity from prosecution.

In the New York case, Trump’s lawyers had argued that the president’s immunity from prosecution shielded him from being subpoenaed.

Roberts rejected that notion, noting that successive American presidents have accepted that they are “subject to subpoena and have uniformly agreed to testify when called in criminal proceedings.”

“Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Roberts wrote. “We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need.”

In the House subpoena case, however, the justices, while acknowledging Congress’s investigative power, said the three House committees overreached in issuing requests for a wide swath of documents from the president and his family.

“The House’s approach would leave essentially no limits on the congressional power to subpoena the President’s personal records,” Roberts wrote. “A limitless subpoena power could transform the established practice of the political branches and allow Congress to aggrandize itself at the President’s expense.”

The highly anticipated decisions, coming on the last day of the Supreme Court’s current term, carry wide reaching legal and political implications in a politically charged atmosphere.

First, even if Trump’s accountants end up turning over his financial records to New York prosecutors, they’re likely to remain hidden as part of the grand jury investigation of the president.

For years, the former New York real estate magnate justified withholding his tax returns by claiming they were under an Internal Revenue Service audit.

More broadly, the ruling against the House subpoenas has implications for the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch, according to some legal experts.

Philip Hackney, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said the ruling threatens Congress’s ability to conduct investigations as part of its legislative and oversight functions.

“This severely hampers the separation of powers by limiting the ability of Congress to serve as a check on the executive branch. This case is not about Trump or [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi. It is about the very structure of power at the highest levels of American government,” he said.

But Saikrishna Prakash, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, said the impact will be limited.

“The court rejected the high-need standard that Nixon adopted for executive privilege and it rejected the no-standard that the House suggested and settled on something in between and the in-between is just not fully fleshed out,” Prakash said.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 3, 2020.

Ada Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels seeking Trump’s records, said that while he was disappointed in the high court’s ruling against their subpoenas, “we are grateful that the court reaffirmed Congress’s broad power to investigate in aid of its legislative authority.”

Congress has the constitutional power, and the duty, to serve as an effective check on the President and the Executive Branch,” Schiff, who led the House prosecution team during Trump’s impeachment trial, said in a statement. “The Court’s decision today makes clear that President Trump is not absolutely immune from such Congressional scrutiny.”

Source:https:voanews.com/

Kasmaal Independent Somali news and analysis website .

Supreme Court Says New York Prosecutors May Obtain Trump’s Financial Records

President Donald Trump speaks about the Supreme Court rulings, during a roundtable discussion with members of the Hispanic community in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, July 9, 2020.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday by a 7 to 2 vote that local prosecutors in New York may obtain President Donald Trump’s tax returns and other closely guarded financial records from his accountants and lenders.

But in a separate case, the high court halted efforts by congressional Democrats to subpoena Trump’s and his family’s records, sending the dispute to lower courts for further review.

The ruling doesn’t mean Trump has no legal recourse, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Like any private citizen, Trump may still “challenge the subpoena on any grounds permitted by state law, Roberts wrote.

Roberts and two Trump appointees on the court — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — joined the majority in both decisions. Roberts wrote the majority opinions. The court’s two most conservative justices — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — dissented.

The highly anticipated rulings came in three separate cases concerning subpoenas issued last year for Trump’s financial records.

While all three cases concerned Trump’s financial records, they raised different constitutional questions.

In the House subpoena case, the question was how far Congress can go in investigating a sitting president. The issue in the New York subpoena dispute was whether a local prosecutor could obtain the personal records of a sitting president who otherwise enjoys immunity from prosecution.

In the New York case, Trump’s lawyers had argued that the president’s immunity from prosecution shielded him from being subpoenaed.

Roberts rejected that notion, noting that successive American presidents have accepted that they are “subject to subpoena and have uniformly agreed to testify when called in criminal proceedings.”

In the House subpoena case, however, the justices, while acknowledging Congress’s investigative power, said the three House committees overreached in issuing requests for a wide swath of documents from the president and his family.

The highly anticipated decisions, coming on the last day of the Supreme Court’s current term, carry wide reaching legal and political implications in a politically charged atmosphere.

First, even if Trump’s accountants end up turning over his financial records to New York prosecutors, they’re likely to remain hidden as part of the grand jury investigation of the president.

For years, the former New York real estate magnate justified withholding his tax returns by claiming they were under an Internal Revenue Service audit.

More broadly, the ruling against the House subpoenas has implications for the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch, according to some legal experts.

Philip Hackney, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said the ruling threatens Congress’s ability to conduct investigations as part of its legislative and oversight functions.

“This severely hampers the separation of powers by limiting the ability of Congress to serve as a check on the executive branch. This case is not about Trump or [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi. It is about the very structure of power at the highest levels of American government,” he said.

But Saikrishna Prakash, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, said the impact will be limited.

“The court rejected the high-need standard that Nixon adopted for executive privilege and it rejected the no-standard that the House suggested and settled on something in between and the in-between is just not fully fleshed out,” Prakash said.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 3, 2020.

Source:https:voanews.com/

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President Donald Trump speaks about the Supreme Court rulings, during a roundtable discussion
with members of the Hispanic community in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, July 9, 2020.