The Supreme Court therefore cut the pear in half. On Thursday, the highest court in the United States concluded by 7 votes to 2 that Donald Trump was not a king and did not enjoy absolute immunity from legal proceedings, authorizing the Manhattan Prosecutor's Office to claim tax returns that the President refuses to make public. But at the same time, the judges blocked, for the moment, the transfer of documents that had been requisitioned by the elected Democrats of Congress. Translation: The legal wrestling will continue, and American voters will probably not learn more about the opaque finances of Donald Trump before the presidential election on November 3.
In the first case, the Manhattan Procuratorate seeks to obtain eight years of tax returns from Donald Trump from accounting firm Mazars, from 2011 to 2018. Prosecutor Cyrus Vance is investigating a payment of $ 130,000 that could have been used to buy the silence from porn star Stormy Daniels, who was about to declare publicly that she had an affair with Donald Trump just before the 2016 presidential election. The pair may have violated election financing laws.
"Not fair," complains Trump
"No citizen, not even the president, can avoid having to produce documents in the event of a criminal investigation," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority. "The president does not enjoy absolute immunity," he added. "It is a huge victory for our justice system and its founding principle that no one - not even the president - is above the law," said the Manhattan attorney.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, denounced a “witch hunt”. “The Supreme Court refers the file to a lower court, the proceedings continue. These are just political pursuits. It's not fair, ”the US president tweeted.
The Supreme Court sends case back to Lower Court, arguments to continue. This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2020Concretely, the New York justice procedure can therefore continue. But the Supreme Court ruled that the president could raise other objections before the courts, and his lawyers rushed into the breach. "We are now going to present new legal and constitutional arguments," said Jay Sekulow, saying that he was "satisfied" with the Court's judgments.
Even if the prosecutor wins, the investigations are carried out by a grand jury, a group of citizens drawn by lot who operate in the greatest secrecy and, in theory, nothing in the file should be made public.
Failure for Democrats in Congress
It is for this reason that the Democrats in Congress had also requisitioned Donald Trump's tax returns and Deutsche Bank documents to shed light on possible financial ties between Donald Trump and Russia. In its decision, the Supreme Court warned elected officials that their power to subpoena (parliamentary orders) was not unlimited. The judges have referred the case to a lower court which will have to closely analyze the arguments of Congress and the White House on the separation of powers.
The story is not over. Law professor Randall Eliason said, "There are going to be new court battles now and Trump's financial documents are unlikely to be seen before the election - or even never." However, it is not excluded that the file will continue to poison the life of Donald Trump if he is re-elected in November. Or be subject to criminal prosecution in 2021 if Joe Biden wins.
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