Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
Not known for his sense of irony, President Donald Trump probably fails to appreciate that his arguments for beating back Congress’ subpoena of his accountant’s records are the polar opposite of arguments he has employed to justify his own conduct.
In fact, Trump’s personal complaint against House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings, D-Md., is the mirror image of the arguments he advanced to defend his travel ban, which the Supreme Court upheld last year in Trump v. Hawaii.
The lawsuit Trump filed Monday morning seeking a court order to block Cummings’ subpoena to Mazars USA, an accountant for the president and Trump Organization, is as much a work of political rhetoric as a claim for legal relief. The president’s complaint begins by asserting that the Democratic Party has declared “all-out political war” on the president. It proceeds to base its case that Democrats are engaging in “a campaign of abusive investigations” on a series of quotations by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and sundry House members from news conferences and political appearances in the wake of the Democratic takeover of the House after November’s midterm elections.
Trump took the exact opposite approach in Trump v. Hawaii. There, his own statements on the campaign trail had left the strong inference that his immigration order, however dressed, was a “Muslim ban.” But Trump argued that the court needed to focus on whether the order fell within the exercise of legitimate executive authority, while discounting or ignoring his own incendiary political propaganda or engaging in psychological second-guessing of the “real” reason for his decisions.
The challengers, meanwhile, urged that the evidence of Trump’s true motive served to establish that Trump’s order fell outside the exercise of legitimate executive authority.
The Supreme Court agreed with Trump. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court,…
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