In delaying any public release of Donald Trump’s financial records on Thursday, the Supreme Court also handed itself a major victory. The loser could be our democratic system of government. The court’s majority in Trump v. Mazars granted the judiciary broad new leeway to decide whether congressional subpoenas against the president will be enforced. The court’s majority found that rigorous judicial oversight is required to ensure that Congress does not harass or overburden presidents with politically motivated demands for information.The result may be a time bomb set to go off under a President Biden, as a judiciary packed with Trump appointees now has broad new discretion to involve itself in fights between future presidents and Congress, potentially undermining effective congressional oversight of the executive branch.Everything Donald Trump Stands For Just Got Slapped Down by the Supreme CourtAs Justice John Roberts pointedly implied in his majority opinion, Trump’s intransigence is the reason the Mazars case ended up before the court in the first place. Congress has demanded information from the executive branch, often to the great annoyance of presidents, for hundreds of years, but disputes over those demands have rarely ended up before the courts. This is because, as part of what courts refer to as the accommodation process, Congress and the president, often after quite rancorous debates, typically reach agreements on the scope of congressional information requests. Thus, while the threat of courtroom litigation has often loomed over such disputes, it has rarely occurred, and, until Trump’s presidency, had not reached the Supreme Court in modern times.After Democrats took over the House in 2018, however, Trump simply refused to accept Congress’ oversight authority, and systematically stonewalled congressional requests for information, thereby forcing the House to issue formal subpoenas and to seek to enforce them in the courts. Trump’s unprecedented recalcitrance thus set the stage for Thursday’s decision, which concerned congressional subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, issued to his banks and accountants.Two federal appellate courts ruled in favor of Congress, following a long line of cases regarding the scope of congressional subpoena authority, which provide that courts should generally steer clear of second-guessing the merits of such legislative informational demands and uphold them so long as they are plausibly related to a legislative purpose. That long-standing hands-off approach is based on a view that judges should not be mucking about in the oversight work of Congress, which necessarily involves gathering information, because doing so would pose a serious risk to the separation of powers, and could effectively arrogate legislative prerogatives to the courts.  In Thursday’s decision, however, Roberts asserted that allowing Congress to exercise its normally broad subpoena authority when it comes to the president would itself pose a serious separation of powers problem, including by allowing Congress to harass or otherwise improperly intrude upon the president. The Court’s answer was to require any congressional subpoena directed at the president to satisfy an elaborate, and in many respects, highly restrictive, balancing test.Courts have a particular affinity for balancing tests. According to cynics, that is because such tests afford judges broad leeway to reach the results they desire in any given case. That is certainly the case with the balancing test Justice Roberts announced in Mazars, which requires Congress to demonstrate that a subpoena has a proper “legislative purpose,” is supported by “substantial evidence”, is “no broader than reasonably necessary”, and is not unduly burdensome. The court cautioned that “[o]ther considerations may be pertinent as well,” thus leaving open the possibility that the list of factors available for courts to balance may grow over time. In sum, the decision affords courts wide leeway to open or close the door on congressional subpoenas involving the president.The seven justices who signed on to Robert’s opinion, including all five of the court’s liberals, presumably believe that they have set the stage for a return to the old accommodation process, and that—because the vagueness of the test announced in Mazars makes it difficult to predict how the courts will resolve a given subpoena dispute—presidents and legislators will once again be motivated to negotiate in relative good faith, and likely end up reaching agreement.That, however, may well not happen. Trump, of course has had particular success in stocking the federal courts—and particularly the Supreme Court—with his nominees, and many of them have proven to be particularly amenable to the assertion of executive power, at least by the current president. Accordingly, Trump, or a future Republican successor, may well choose to stonewall Congress just as Trump has done, in the hope that the courts will apply their balancing test in his favor, and thereby effectively aid the president in frustrating legislative oversight.While some may find it unduly cynical to expect that courts may review congressional subpoenas through a partisan or ideological lens, the fact remains that the test the court adopted Thursday is tailor-made to arrogate power to the judiciary, and to make Congress’ critical oversight power subject to the whims of the judges.The roadblocks the court has now placed in the way of Congress’ ability to enforce subpoenas in the courts make it all the more important that the legislature seek to come up with a workable way to exercise its so-called inherent contempt authority to compel compliance with presidential subpoenas. Under the inherent contempt doctrine, Congress may have the theoretical power to go so far as to imprison recalcitrant executive branch witnesses if they refuse to answer the legislature’s questions. Indeed, Trump appellate court appointee Neomi Rao has openly suggested that Congress might choose to use force to compel compliance with its subpoenas.  But, as impeachment expert Frank Bowman III has observed, whether Congress can actually effectively and practically exercise that authority, is another matter.  Indeed, it is unclear if there is a workable means for Congress to exercise its inherent contempt authority without involving the courts. A recent proposal by Rep. Ted Lieu that would let Congress impose fines on officials who defy its subpoenas offers a starting point. In the wake of the Mazars decision, however, it is clear that more thought needs to be given to this important open question.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Moments after the Supreme Court resoundingly rejected President Donald Trump’s claims to total immunity from prosecution on Thursday, the president did what he usually does: He began venting his rage on Twitter.Behind the scenes, however, members of his team were far more serene. “It’s not something we are worrying about,” an adviser to Trump’s re-election campaign bluntly told The Daily Beast. That’s because, as that adviser and another source working on the president’s re-election effort say, they are operating under the belief that the ruling will be a non-issue, at least for now. There is widespread expectation that any resulting revelations about the president’s finances will occur after the 2020 election, nullifying any immediate political damage from the court.Everything Donald Trump Stands For Just Got Slapped Down by the Supreme CourtThat sense of relief marked a coda on a dramatic and constitutionally consequential Friday morning, in which the court issued a pair of 7-2 decisions, ruling that the president’s blanket claims of immunity from legal investigation—both by Congress and law enforcement authorities in New York—lacked legal merit. In broad strokes, the decisions were setbacks for Trump, which may explain why he tweeted, shortly after they were handed down, that it was “Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!” But the court also remanded both cases to lower courts to consider specific objections to the proceedings, ones that don’t simply claim the president is above the law by virtue of his office, giving the president’s re-election team what it wanted: time. Though congressional Democrats and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance may gain access to Trump’s tax returns and other financial records, that information is not likely to emerge before voters go to the polls in November. If that was any comfort for Trump, his immediate, barely comprehensible Twitter outburst didn’t show it. But congressional Democrats were not entirely pleased either. The decision dealt a blow of sorts to congressional oversight powers, rejecting the broad scope of House Democrats’ requests for financial information from the president, and putting in place new standards for subpoenas to have to meet. For legal conservatives, it was a satisfactory outcome—finding a middle ground between demands for congressional and law enforcement oversight powers and separation of powers claims by the president.“I think they struck a pretty good balance,” said Devin Watkins, a member of the Federalism and Separation of Powers Executive Committee at the conservative Federalist Society, in a Thursday conference call with reporters on the two cases, Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Vance. “They didn't rubber stamp the subpoenas of the House of Representatives, but nor did they rubber stamp the opinions of President Trump’s personal attorney,” Watkins said of the former.Supremes: NY Can Get Trump’s Tax Returns, but Not House DemsThe balance of the two decisions was evident in a concurring opinion offered by Trump’s two Supreme Court nominees—Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—who sided with the court’s more progressive members on the overarching question of presidential immunity. But the two men explicitly carved out the president’s right to raise other constitutional objections to the breadth and scope of congressional requests for information.When asked by reporters to weigh in at a press briefing on Thursday, Trump’s White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed that the president was “gratified” by the day’s decision. She also, however, argued that recent rulings demonstrated the imperative of re-electing Trump and placing more conservatives on the Court.Jenna Ellis, an attorney to Trump and his re-election campaign, said in a statement to The Daily Beast on Thursday morning, that the rulings amounted to “a delayed victory for President Trump,” even though they clearly discounted his broad claims of legal immunity. “Democrats have continued to harass President Trump through the Russia Witch Hunt, the Impeachment Hoax, and other lies and manipulations, and Democrats will continue to lose,” said Ellis. “All Americans, including the President of the United States, have a right to be free from politically-motivated harassment.”Thursday’s decision follows weeks of Trump griping that the Supreme Court, to which he has already appointed two justices with strong conservative track records, is not nearly friendly enough. For years, he has viewed it as the job, at least in part, of the justices and judges he nominates to “be loyal” and protective of him, on both personal and policy matters, according to three people who’ve spoken to the president about this.In the past few weeks, the president’s frustrations over the court’s ideological makeup have flared up again—fueled by multiple recent decisions, including on immigration—that have left him feeling that the highest court in the land had not yet been remade sufficiently in his vision. He repeatedly told close advisers in the past month that one way he thinks he can secure re-election is by hyper-motivating his base voters, particularly evangelicals, by messaging that the Supreme Court is still “too liberal” and that failing to re-elect Trump could risk undoing all the judicial progress they’ve made since 2017, two sources familiar with the president’s conversations say.The president, naturally, was monitoring Thursday’s decision closely, with the case and its potential fallout adding to the cluster of re-election-year woes that has already included a global pandemic, a crashed U.S. economy, and widespread unrest and protest. Even though the president and his team have a chance to run out the clock between now and after the November election, the ruling still stung to MAGA stalwarts. To some Trump allies, the court’s decision was yet another betrayal from people who owed their new jobs and elevation to the 45th president of the United States. To others, it was a disappointment in diminished returns. “[Kavanaugh and Gorsuch] missed the point,” Tom Fitton, who leads the conservative group Judicial Watch and remains a favorite of Trump’s on Twitter and on Fox programs, said on Thursday morning. He added that this is really “about presidential harassment, which is an assault on our constitutional structure of government.”Fitton added that “the battle will continue.” Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

President Trump is not immune from turning over his tax returns and other financial records to the Manhattan district attorney, the Supreme Court has ordered in a ruling that has enraged the president. In a 7-2 decision, the court sided with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who asked for eight years of Trump’s business and personal tax records to help an investigation into whether Trump and his company violated state laws in connection with hush-money payments to women that allegedly had affairs with the president.The ruling sent the case back to the lower courts, however, meaning Trump’s legal team could still try to delay the release of his records before the case is ultimately resolved. Trump reacted angrily to the decision, condemning it as “political prosecution” before vowing to “keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York.”In a separate ruling that also came in at 7-2 among the justices, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot subpoena a broader range of tax and financial records that House Democratic investigators had requested.Trump has been refusing to release his tax returns for years, overturning the precedent set by the last six presidents. Both of the court cases have been fought tooth and nail by the president, who argued the cases lacked legitimate legislative purpose and were driven by partisan intent.In a statement released after the decision in the office’s case, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance said: “This is 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.”In Trump v. Mazars, a case consolidated with Trump v. Deutsche Bank, three House committees argued it was within their constitutional authority to issue Trump a subpoena to obtain several years worth of personal financial documents and records from Mazars, his accounting firm. The committees, including the Committee on Oversight and Reform that issued the subpoena in mid-2019 to Mazars, argued the documents were part of an investigation into government ethics and conflicts of interest in the Executive Branch. Part of the investigation, the committee argued, included “the accuracy of statements made by the president on various financial discloses.” In the Deutsche Bank case, the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued subpoenas to the bank and Capital One for records into Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization as part of an investigation into any links or coordination between the Russian government, or any other foreign actors, that may have influenced the 2016 U.S. elections. The investigations by the two committees also focused on Russian money laundering. The subpoenas came after Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen testified that the president had previously exaggerated his wealth in order to seek loans from several banks, including Deutsche. Cohen also provided financial documents showing Trump’s personal assets between 2011 and 2013 to prove his allegations during his February 2019 testimony to the House Oversight Committee.Trump’s team swiftly fought back against the subpoenas, asking a federal judge in New York to block the banks from complying and arguing that the subpoenas open the door to allow Congress to seek legislative powers beyond their job description. But federal judges in New York and Washington, D.C.—both at the district and appeals court levels—repeatedly ruled against Trump and agreed with the argument that the subpoenas did not exceed Congress’ power.“It is simply not fathomable that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a president for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct—past or present—even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry,” U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta wrote in the appeal court ruling in October. In December, the Supreme Court agreed to take up both cases in a combined hearing. In his January brief to the Supreme Court, the president slammed the “unprecedented” subpoenas and said a ruling siding with the House Committees would have implications for presidents seeking to keep their financial records private. Trump Sues House Oversight Chairman to Block Subpoena of His Financial RecordsTrump v. Vance is rooted in a New York grand jury investigation into whether Trump and his company violated state laws in connection with hush-money payments to several women that allegedly had affairs with the president. Vance is seeking eight years’ worth of Trump’s financial records and tax returns. The president has denied having affairs with these women, but Vance said the financial records were crucial to see if business records were falsified and if any tax laws were violated. Trump argued in federal district court in New York that he couldn’t be subpoenaed in a criminal case because he is a sitting president. The president lost several bids last year in lower courts to stop the subpoenas, prompting the Supreme Court in December to agree to hear the case. Similar to his argument against the congressional committees, Trump argued that the legal move sought “to compel the production of an enormous swath of the president’s personal financial information.” His legal team slammed Vance for “pointedly refus[ing] to eliminate the president as a target for indictment.”Judge Napolitano Schools Fox News on Trump's SCOTUS ‘Defeat’Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. 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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the House Democrats who led the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, on Wednesday thanked Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for participating in the proceedings after Vindman announced that he was...