Supreme Court could deliver its judgment in Trump business records case today 1/n
I wrote back in March about the huge issues at stake in the Trump business records case 2/n
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The Trump business records case should be a 7-2 or even 9-0 slam dunk against Trump. The legal issue in the case is Congress' right to subpoena third-party documents. Historically, those rights have been very large, and this case very comfortably within precedent. 3/n
The Trump argument in the business records - delivered, shamefully, by the Solicitor General not Trump's personal lawyers - is, by contrast, facially preposterous. 4/n
The Trump DoJ asks the Supreme Court to overturn precedents on the subpoena power dating back to the 1880s. Instead, the Supreme Court should invent out of thin air a complex and wholly new set of standards to evaluate subpoenas of presidential records. 5/n
6/n Nevertheless, I am not optimistic about outcome of the case. I cannot imagine the court accepting the ludicrous argument offered by Trump DoJ. But I can imagine Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch grabbing a convenient exit from political pressure by ... 6/n
... by ruling that while the Trump argument is plainly absurd, *some* new standard of review of subpoenas is warranted. The new standard may probably be only slightly different from the old standard. But it will suffice to return the case for to be reargued in lower courts. 7/n
Under the new standard, Trump will still surely lose. But he will not lose before November 2020, and that will be good enough for Teamp Trump - and to satisfy the more Trump-adjacent justices of the Supreme Court. 8/n
I very much hope I am wrong about this. But the business records case is life-and-death for Trump, and the pressures from the Trump White House on Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and even Roberts must be formidable. END
