How the Supreme Court Can Sidestep the Tax Returns Case to Avoid Interfering With the 2020 Elections - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
How the Supreme Court Can Sidestep the Tax Returns Case to Avoid Interfering With the 2020 Elections
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Much as Baskin-Robbins and Krispy Kreme dependably present a new Flavor of the Month, so it is that the Democrats reliably offer a new Impeachment of the Month. We all have tasted tidbits of each, with these remaining some of the most memorable monthly flavors — among so many others — to Impeach 45.

Stormy Daniels, Russian collusion, naming his son “Barron” (instead of Prince or Kaiser or Khaleesi?), emoluments, high cholesterol, 25th Amendment, tweeting tweets that Al Green later tweets that he does not approve, Michael Cohen secret tapes, allegedly referring to dung-hole polities as such (and probably never saying it), threatening nuclear holocaust by meeting with the North Korean Dough Boy to negotiate a deal before all the pieces were locked in place, ending democracy as we know it by pulling security credentials from the likes of John Brennan, who voted for the Communist Party’s presidential candidate, destroying our relationship with Europe by imposing tariffs and trade impediments on them that parallel theirs on us, upbraiding Baltimore for record-setting murder/crime/vermin mismanagement, cutting funds to sanctuary cities, Michael Avenatti television interviews on CNN declaring readiness to run for president (or to walk slowly for president instead of running, if prison-issued leg chains hamper the speed), insulting the Europeans in NATO because they are too cheap to pay their paltry 2-percent fair share, calling the media the enemy of the people, threatening world peace and nuclear holocaust by pulling out of the Iran Deal, A Week of Omarosa, insulting a sourpuss 16-year-old Swedish kid who one day will wake up to the realization that the Earth and its oceans and carbon all are just fine but that her parents’ generation indeed ruined her generation’s lives by hocking them all into inextricable debt to China, treason for the Putin press conference, destroying the American economy and causing world economic collapse by imposing tariffs on China, upbraiding California for pursuing politically correct and scientifically incorrect forestry policies that amplify the frequency and devastation of the state’s regular forest fires, building the Wall with discretionary military funds, serving hamburgers and fast food to college football players, causing the world to end in less than 12 years by pulling out of the Paris Climate Thingie, anti-Semitism for moving America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem, anti-Semitism for recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, anti-Semitism for declaring Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria legal unless decided otherwise by Israel’s Supreme Court, anti-Semitism for issuing an executive order punishing anti-Semites who receive federal Title VI funds, anti-Semitism for wishing Jews in America a Happy Rosh Hashanah, anti-Semitism for having an Orthodox Jewish daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, anti-Black racism for bringing down Black unemployment numbers to the lowest since the creation of counting, anti-Black racism for giving imprisoned people a second chance at freedom via the First Step Act, anti-Hispanic racism for bringing down Hispanic unemployment numbers to the lowest since the creation of numbers, anti-Black and anti-Hispanic racism for supporting school choice for Black and Hispanic inner-city youth, anti-Black racism for supporting and increasing federal funding of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), anti-Black racism by naming Dr. Ben Carson to his cabinet, Blasey Perjury Ford, the Ukraine phone call, bribery, quid pro quo, banning Jim Acosta from press conferences, anti-Black racism by being a thousand-times-better president than Obama, and tweeting that people who hate America should go back to places of their ethnic ancestry to see what real junk is.

For December, we have two new flavors: Abuse of Congress and Obstruction of Power. Or Abuse of Obstruction and Power of Congress. Or something like that. Whatever. As the Democrats watch their Impeachment of the Month ice cream start to melt, they still salivate wistfully over future monthly impeachment flavors. The big one for next year, they hope, will be Abuse Quo of Obstruction Quid of Tax Returns Pro. They are dying for those tax returns. Oh, how they want to see those tax returns! If you have a kid who learned to read sometime between 1997 and the following decade, and if you remember how that kid would sit at the door on the Saturday mid-morning each year when the guy or woman in brown shorts from UPS would ring the bell and deliver the latest volume of Harry Potter on its official publication date, then you can picture how Al Green and Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and the Squad, all camp out every night waiting to be the first to read Trump’s tax returns when UPS delivers them.

Amid the scavenger hunt to find Trump’s tax returns, it is clear that Trump does not want to release them, and the Impeachers cannot live without them. To smoke out those returns, the Impeachers have been parading to the courts, finding friendly judges who are only too happy to accommodate them, and the president predictably has been appealing the rulings en route to the United States Supreme Court. SCOTUS is the only panel in the land where the poor guy has half a chance at getting justice in this country because it includes such open-minded jurists as Ruth Ginsburg, who publicly calls him a “faker.” Nothing like a blindfolded Lady Justice to determine a matter of profound legal import: “He has no consistency about him,” Ginsburg told CNN. “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.… How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

Can you imagine? This is what is going to sit as an impartial judge when the question arrives as to whether or not the president is required to release his taxes? Can you imagine? How on G-d’s earth can it be that she will not be forced to recuse on that case matter when it arrives? Like, uh, how did she put it in her CNN interview? Oh, yeah: “How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?” Right. Justice decayed is justice deep-fried.

The issue now is on the Supreme Court’s Spring 2020 docket. The justices will consider appeals from a Democrat New York state court that has sided with New York Democrat Prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr. and with federal courts that have sided with the Democrat House of Representatives, with those matters all now having gone through federal appellate stages in which the president’s attorneys have gotten to meet and exchange niceties of law with a panoply of panels comprised overwhelmingly of Clinton and Obama judges. The challenge that the others who serve alongside the prejudiced Ginsburg as Supreme Court justices will face when the matter comes before them in the forthcoming spring 2020 term is: How do we, the Supreme Court, avoid messing up the 2020 elections in the way that James Comey forever will be suspect of having messed up the 2016 presidential outcome when he announced, on the eve of those elections, that he was reopening the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails?

There is absolutely no way that SCOTUS wants that burden or legacy. We saw it when Chief Justice Roberts went through mental gymnastics to avoid having the Supreme Court overturn Obamacare. We saw it when the Court avoided overturning the Bush–Gore election results during the chad era. Other than the prejudiced Ginsburg, whose mind was made up before the matter even became a court case, the other eight Supreme Court justices, despite their political proclivities, actually do care about seeming to be impartial and above personal considerations when they hand down decisions. In this particular matter, they not only have to deal with a political time bomb but they also need to hand down the decision in June, a mere five months before the presidential election. How can they avoid intermingling in the election by handing down a bombshell ruling so close to the voting? There are three simple approaches from which they can choose:

1. Hold that Trump does not have to release the tax returns. If SCOTUS holds that way, the matter remains at status quo ante — no harm, no foul. Back to the election. End of story. Ho-hum.

2. Force the prejudiced Ginsburg to recuse from the matter because she opened her big mouth when she should have shut up as any dignified Supreme Court justice would have grasped. By having blurted out and having disclosed her pre-judicial expectation that Trump needs to release his taxes, even before legal arguments were placed before her, she disqualified herself from this matter. It is hard to think back to a legal matter in the past century in which a recusal was more obviously required because, in this one, she blurted it out to a media outlet like CNN, and it was all over the place. Once she is recused, that leaves a SCOTUS that can go either 6-2 or 5-3 against releasing taxes or 4-4. A 4-4 would be tricky because, on the one hand, it would leave the appellate decisions standing, but that pending tie if they are not 6-2 or 5-3 against releasing could persuade the court to go to option 3:

3. All the court has to do is what it so often does: It can point to one or more fine points of law that it feels the lower courts did not adequately evaluate when they reached their decisions and simply send the matter back down the pipeline for further findings and a new adjudication considering the previously overlooked or unconsidered point of law. That sends it down to Obama and Clinton judges, who again will rule against the president anyway. BUT … But it then means that the second-generation lower-court rulings, when they are appealed to the Supreme Court, will not be on the court’s docket for a final decision until after the November 2020 elections. In that way, even if the court were to order Trump to release his tax returns, the November 2020 voting already would be history.

The worst that Trump then would encounter would be (i) the court orders the reelected Trump to release the taxes; (ii) the Democrats and Corrupt Journalist Corps then go into an orgy of ferreting through the returns and finding all kinds of reasons to impeach him; (iii) the Democrats spend the first three years of Trump’s second term trying to impeach him; (iii-a) if the Republicans have the House majority, big deal; (iii-b) if the Democrats control the House, then Schiff conducts secret star chamber hearings in which newly elevated Lt. Col. Lois Lerner testifies about taxes with a fancy hat with lots of gold on the rim, followed by Nadler issuing articles of impeachment for Abuse of Deductions and Obstruction of Attachments; (iv) the Senate throws it out because there never will be two-thirds to convict on anything in his taxes that precede his 2016 election to the presidency; (v) polls will show the country fed up with the Democrats wasting yet another three years; and (vi) Pence will be elected by a landslide unless Trump is given a third term as well-deserved compensatory-and-punitive damages for what he has gone through while somehow, despite it all, making America great again.

Solves everything. Case closed. Many happy returns.

Dov Fischer
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Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq., is Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values (comprising over 2,000 Orthodox rabbis), was adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools for nearly 20 years, and is Rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit before practicing complex civil litigation for a decade at three of America’s most prominent law firms: Jones Day, Akin Gump, and Baker & Hostetler. He likewise has held leadership roles in several national Jewish organizations, including Zionist Organization of America, Rabbinical Council of America, and regional boards of the American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation. His writings have appeared in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Federalist, National Review, the Jerusalem Post, and Israel Hayom. A winner of an American Jurisprudence Award in Professional Legal Ethics, Rabbi Fischer also is the author of two books, including General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine, which covered the Israeli General’s 1980s landmark libel suit. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com.
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