• Supreme Court: NYC prosecutor can get Trump’s financial records.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump cannot keep his tax returns and financial records away from a New York City prosecutor pursuing possible hushmoney payments during the 2016 White House race.
The court temporarily blocked congressional investigators from gaining access to many of the same records. It sent the effort by House Democrats back to a lower court for further review of the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
Both 7-2 decisions were written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Trump’s two nominees, Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The court’s two other conservatives, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented.
The landmark rulings carry political, legal and constitutional implications for the president, Congress and law enforcement officials who argued the records could reveal evidence of criminal wrongdoing. For the time being, they mean the public won’t see Trump’s financial documents: Grand jury investigations are secret, and three House committees won’t get the records in the midst of the presidential campaign.
“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.”
Kavanaugh and Gorsuch did not join the majority opinion’s reasoning. Kavanaugh wrote separately for the duo, stressing that Trump’s lawyers can raise new arguments at the district court level.
Even so, Kavanaugh was adamant that Trump is not immune from the law.
“In our system of government, as this court has often stated, no one is above the law,” he said. “That principle applies, of course, to a president.”
In dissent, Thomas said the New
York case should be returned to lower courts to determine whether Trump’s duties as president should preclude compliance with the grand jury subpoena. Alito was more adamant that it should be struck down.
“The subpoena at issue here is unprecedented,” Alito said. “Never before has a local prosecutor subpoenaed the records of a sitting president. The court’s decision threatens to impair the functioning of the presidency and provides no real protection against the use of the subpoena power by the nation’s 2,300+ local prosecutors.”
Trump, through his personal legal team, has refused to comply with the subpoena from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance seeking information from his accountant and bankers. One of those attorneys, Jay Sekulow, sought to portray Thursday’s rulings as a victory because lower courts still have a role to play.
Vance heralded the ruling as “a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one – not even a president – is above the law.”
“Our investigation, which was delayed for almost a year by this lawsuit, will resume, guided as always by the grand jury’s solemn obligation to follow the law and the facts, wherever they may lead,” he said.
Trump called Vance’s investigation “a political prosecution.” The president said, “Now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!”
During oral arguments held by telephone in May, conservative and liberal justices alike wondered how to balance investigators’ need for evidence against the president’s claim that he must be free from probes.
In previous battles over documents or testimony, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Presidents Richard Nixon in 1974 and Bill Clinton in 1997, with their nominees in agreement.
Vance’s subpoenas came as part of a criminal probe of alleged hush-money payments that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, said were made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both women claimed they had affairs with Trump, which he denied. Two lower courts upheld the subpoenas.