A federal appeals court is the next location for determining if a subpoena for Trump's tax returns is a legal subpoena that is required to be complied with.
Background - this is a subpoena that was issued by a grand jury (not by any partisan prosecutor) for the Manhattan District Attorney's office for 3 years of various financial records from the Trump Org, other orgs, and his personal tax returns. The subpoena was issued to an accounting firm that has them.
The investigation is regarding possible NY state law violations of how reimbursement of the hush money payments occurred and yes there are crimes that apply for that.
Now, critical point - the documents are held by a 3rd party, not by Trump. That matters for additional legal arguments that have to be made based upon case law (like Carpenter v US), but that's into the weeds.
The gut wrenching argument made today:
Trump has had his lawyers try to stop this, obviously, as they have a vested interest in not allowing evidence of possible criminal acts to be seen by prosecutors. However...they are using unitary executive theory arguments as part of this (which is the absurd theory Barr believes in).
Today during questioning, Trump's attorney was explaining that the President cannot be investigated for ANY criminal wrongdoing while in office as that would create a burden upon the office. When asked by a judge if that meant Trump would be immune from prosecution at the state level if he were to shoot someone on 5th ave, Trump's lawyer stated "That's correct."
So think about this - the legal argument now being made is Trump is immune from ANY criminal prosecution no matter what. There is no case law precedent to support this and only a non-binding policy from DOJ that the federal government will not prosecute a sitting POTUS while in office for federal crimes due to the intersection of the DOJ and the POTUS. There is no precedent or law for this applying to state level crimes. The DOJ policy has also never gone through judicial review to determine if it is even constitutional.
So, your President is now argument he is immune from criminal prosecution. That is what dictators say, FYI. I am sure all the tough on crime conservatives will stand up and call out this complete BS legal argument...
Background - this is a subpoena that was issued by a grand jury (not by any partisan prosecutor) for the Manhattan District Attorney's office for 3 years of various financial records from the Trump Org, other orgs, and his personal tax returns. The subpoena was issued to an accounting firm that has them.
The investigation is regarding possible NY state law violations of how reimbursement of the hush money payments occurred and yes there are crimes that apply for that.
Now, critical point - the documents are held by a 3rd party, not by Trump. That matters for additional legal arguments that have to be made based upon case law (like Carpenter v US), but that's into the weeds.
The gut wrenching argument made today:
Trump has had his lawyers try to stop this, obviously, as they have a vested interest in not allowing evidence of possible criminal acts to be seen by prosecutors. However...they are using unitary executive theory arguments as part of this (which is the absurd theory Barr believes in).
Today during questioning, Trump's attorney was explaining that the President cannot be investigated for ANY criminal wrongdoing while in office as that would create a burden upon the office. When asked by a judge if that meant Trump would be immune from prosecution at the state level if he were to shoot someone on 5th ave, Trump's lawyer stated "That's correct."
So think about this - the legal argument now being made is Trump is immune from ANY criminal prosecution no matter what. There is no case law precedent to support this and only a non-binding policy from DOJ that the federal government will not prosecute a sitting POTUS while in office for federal crimes due to the intersection of the DOJ and the POTUS. There is no precedent or law for this applying to state level crimes. The DOJ policy has also never gone through judicial review to determine if it is even constitutional.
So, your President is now argument he is immune from criminal prosecution. That is what dictators say, FYI. I am sure all the tough on crime conservatives will stand up and call out this complete BS legal argument...
