SCt today sat on one of the most important issues of the balance of powers. Listening in, I found Sekulow pretty scary in his arguments for the okayness of presidents shooting pedestrians on fifth avenue. Joggers there may wish to weave rapidly as they run and don Kevlar running jackets.
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/12/853450751/supreme-court-to-hear-cases-involving-trumps-taxes-financial-records
Just how the newly energized conservative Supreme Court majority will weigh all these factors is uncertain. Every one of the conservative justices, as well as Obama appointee Elena Kagan, served in the executive branch and all have, at various times, argued strenuously in support of muscular executive power.
The newest justice, Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh, has both criticized and praised the Supreme Court's Nixon tapes decision. Indeed, prior to his nomination to the court, he wrote a law review article suggesting that Congress should pass a law making the president entirely immune from investigation during his tenure.
If the court opts to duck the whole question, and punts, then Trump may have no further recourse and Mazar and Dbank may have to comply with their subpoenas. Interesting times.
I don't see how they duck it, having chosen to hear it. They could rule in the president's favor, against the rule of law. They could support the rule of law.
And they can choose a third path which is designed to allow them to
later support the rule of law, but protect the president until after the election, by remanding it back to a lower court to consider this or that bit of fine tuning, thereby delaying the decision until it has gone back through that court and then back to them again.
This last would be the
most despicable and cowardly of them. But having thought of it, I can imagine the conservatives going for it.
Poll
5 (45.5%)