Clutch the pearls... oh noes!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.1ce766850461In 1787, the framers gave us a president, not a king. On Tuesday, lawyers for President Trump gave a dissenting opinion.
In the first of many courtroom showdowns between Trump’s executive branch and the legislative branch, Trump’s lawyer William Consovoy argued to U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta that Congress has no authority to pry into Trump’s finances. That was expected. Unexpected was Consovoy’s broader argument: that Congress has essentially no authority to investigate any president for anything. Sorry, Sam Ervin: Even the Watergate investigation would have been illegal under the theory offered by Trump’s team. --snip--
Consovoy, a beefy former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, offered two related points:
(A) Congress can’t issue a subpoena or otherwise probe a president unless it is doing so for a “legitimate legislative purpose.”
(B) Any “legitimate legislative purpose” Congress could conceivably devise would be uncons utional.
As a result, Consovoy argued, Congress can’t investigate to see if a law is being broken, can’t inform the public of wrongdoing by the executive and can’t look for presidential conflicts of interest or corruption, because that would be “law enforcement.”
Forget about the Unitary Executive Theory. This one is closer to the Divine Right of Kings.
Mehta, an Obama appointee, probed for the limits of this breathtaking theory but found none:
Trump’s finances are not subject to investigation?
“Correct,” Consovoy informed the judge.
Congress can’t verify the accuracy of the president’s financial statements?
“Correct.”
If “a president was involved in some corrupt enterprise, you mean to tell me because he is the president of the United States, Congress would not have power to investigate?”
No, Consovoy said, because that’s “not pursuant to its legislative agenda.” --snip--
But surely Congress could investigate a president’s compliance with the Cons ution’s emoluments clause?
“I respectfully disagree in part,” Consovoy persisted, saying Congress can’t engage in “anything that looks like a law enforcement investigation.”
Even the Whitewater and Watergate investigations exceeded congressional authority?
Here, Consovoy demurred (“I’d have to look,” he said), rather than admit his theory would have indeed banned both.
The Supreme Court has said judges shouldn’t look at Congress’s motives (even if they appear to be political) for investigating the executive, deferring to the legislature on what is a legitimate legislative function. But Consovoy told Mehta that “I don’t think the court can ignore” the Democrats’ motives, as expressed in public statements, and he called their legislative reasons “retroactive rationalizations.” Consovoy’s own argument sounded more political than legal at times. His brief began: “The Democrat Party . . . has declared all-out political war against President Donald J. Trump. Subpoenas are their weapon of choice.”
Consovoy’s argument was so aggressive, it seemed Trump’s lawyers expected defeat in the lower court and were looking for a higher court to reinterpret the law in Trump’s favor or, more likely, for the appeals to stretch until after the 2020 election. Consovoy sought delays for discovery and more arguments, saying it would be a disservice if “I did not go into depth.” But Mehta brushed off these attempts, saying he would close the record this week. And the judge flatly rejected Consovoy’s exotic argument that Mehta should preemptively declare uncons utional any hypothetical legislation Congress might come up with related to its probe of Trump’s finances.
Clutch the pearls... oh noes!
the OLC "opinion" by the self-serving, untouchable club of DoJ lawyers is not in the Cons ution, has not been passed by Congress, has not been decided by the judiciary.
It's a ing opinion, like OLC's famous "torture is ok".
POTUS argues he's above the law?
nbd, says you.
He's more concerned with bigger issues, like the comma placements in CNN headlines.
but dominated by what Fox opinionators said last night, this morning
Repugs are implementing the Unitary Executive, so beloved by head war criminal Cheney, which is to be beyond any interference from Congress or the judiciary
Trump Argument Comes Into View
We’ll have more on this shortly.
But I want to point out the common argument the President’s personal lawyers (yesterday) and the White House Counsel’s office (in today’s letter) are now making.
They argue that the Congress has no legitimate oversight role with respect to the executive branch at all,
a stunning argument that would clip the wings of Congress permanently.
They are arguing first
that the only legitimate do ent requests or subpoenas are those tied specifically and narrowly to shaping upcoming legislation.
That’s an aspect of oversight but only a smallish part of it.
Secondly,
anything that is tied to wrongdoing or malfeasance or possibly crimes is “law enforcement”,
which is the exclusive purview of the executive branch.
In other words, from both sides of the equation,
they argue that Congress has no oversight role at all.
Now the argument is out in the open.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-argument-comes-into-view?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_cam paign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29
Funny you're concerned about that but not yrs of illegal spying and a hoax of a conspiracy in russiagate that you and many pushed along as reality. out of here!
Illegal spying AND a hoax of a conspiracy!
You must have me confused with someone else. I got a mile of from Bonnerific and Spurs Homer for questioning Russiagate -- they still think I'm a DJT stan.
Look, have the investigation. It's not going to be any easier to prove than than the conspiracy alleged against Trump and is likely to produce a similar result: a legally inconclusive report that people bicker over endlessly.
It's not cool for POTUS to sic the DOJ on his political opponents, period.
I notice the Repug pols are outraged
i probably do have you confused tbh... my bad! i think an investigation into the coup d'etat actors is going to open a bunch of closed minds nation/world wide but that's just me.
was it ok for those same losers to sick the fbi on trump as well as numerous other 3 letter agencies? it's time for justice whether the dems want to see their snake headed heroes fall or not.
no one cares what you noticed motherjones! go back to your padded room already.
I've not seen any evidence Obama sicced the FBI on Trump, have you?
That'll be as hard or harder to prove than the narrative that DJT cooperated directly with the GRU during his campaign.
Going full re is your specialty, calf tats.
How was this coup d'etat supposed to work again?
You guys never answered.
Clapper ran his yapper. Try to keep up please.
OH good luck with that.
“If it weren’t for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, special counsel Mueller’s investigation”
-Clapper's yapper
Link?
Context?
Anything?
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