Which is really a slippery question. Yesterday, the President experienced another defeat:
A federal appeals court on Wednesday let stand a ruling allowing lawmakers to subpoena President Donald Trump’s accountants for years of his financial records. A lawyer for the president promised to appeal to the Supreme Court.
On an 8-3 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to grant a hearing before the full court, upholding a ruling last month by a three-judge panel of the court to allow the subpoena.
The decision means that unless Trump appeals to the Supreme Court and wins, the House Oversight and Reform Committee can enforce its subpoena ordering the accounting firm, Mazars USA LLP, to hand over any documents in its possession related to accounts of the Trump Organization dating to January 2009. [NBC News]
So onward to SCOTUS, which Steve Benen reminds his readers, as if we needed reminding, of former Speaker of the House Gingrich’s very cry of corruption:
During a live interview on Oct. 25 [2018] at The Washington Post, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that if Democrats re-take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections and subpoena the president’s tax returns, it would likely force a fight in the U.S. Supreme Court. “And,” Gingrich said,”we’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it.” [WaPo]
And now the question for every single member of SCOTUS is whether ideological loyalty is more important than loyalty to the country and its laws, or whether they’re congruent, liberal and conservative alike. And for the non-lawyer, it’ll be hard to tell who answered which way; we’ll have to listen to the experts in the matter to see who appears to have let their loyalties rule their behavior to the detriment of their legacy.
Or not. There’s four outcomes possible here.
- SCOTUS refuses to hear the appeal. Enough of them agree with the lower court decision that they get to not be part of this mess.
- SCOTUS takes the case and decides for the President.
- SCOTUS takes the case and decides against the President.
- SCOTUS takes the case and sends it back to the lower courts for reconsideration on a technical point.
I think 2 & 4 are functionally equivalent for partisan purposes.
