Trump spins political victory out of Supreme
Court defeat
The Supreme Court rejected a key Trump argument, but
likely left the president’s taxes private until after the election.
Within minutes of the Thursday's Supreme Court decision
on his tax returns, President Donald Trump was already spinning the ruling as a
"political prosecution."
By ANITA
KUMAR
07/09/2020
06:55 PM EDT
Even when
President Donald Trump loses, he wins.
The Supreme
Court gave a New York prosecutor the tentative right to see Trump’s tax
returns, but it seems unlikely the documents will be turned over in the coming
months. And the Supreme Court ruled Congress can still try to subpoena Trump’s
financial records, but the legal sparring over the details will linger well
past the election.
So
essentially, even though the nation’s highest court rejected several of Trump’s
legal arguments, he got what he wanted politically — his financial records will
likely remain private until after voters go to the polls in November.
It’s the
way Trump has gotten by his whole life, in business and politics. Nothing is a
loss, just an opportunity to delay and attack. Trump the businessman
countersued when facing loan collectors or allegations of wrongdoing. Trump the
politician counterattacks when faced with any staffer who disagrees with him,
any opponent who questions his behavior, or any judge who rules against him.
“He’ll
weaponize it,” said Bryan Lanza, a lobbyist who worked on Trump's 2016 campaign
and transition and remains close to the 2020 campaign. “He’s a counterpuncher.”
Indeed,
Trump has already spun Thursday’s Supreme Court rulings — one that rejected the
president's claim of “absolute” immunity in a New York state criminal
investigation, another that concluded lower courts did not do enough to
scrutinize congressional subpoenas for Trump’s financial records. Within
minutes, Trump was on Twitter, excoriating the decisions as the latest data
point in the bureaucratic plot to topple his presidency.
“This is
all a political prosecution,” he tweeted. “I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and
others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not
fair to this Presidency or Administration!” Later, he simply wrote in all caps:
“POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”
As Trump
heads into his battle with presumptive 2020 rival Joe Biden, Trump won’t avoid
talking about the investigations into him and his vast real estate empire.
Instead, he will characterize them as partisan attacks by Democrats, the media
and his critics — the same way he has cast the investigation into Russia’s
election interference, his impeachment inquiry and more than a dozen other
probes into every entity he has run.
"It's
a political witch hunt, the likes of which nobody's ever seen before,” Trump
told reporters Thursday. “It's a pure witch hunt, it's a hoax, just like the
Mueller investigation was a hoax that I won, and this is another hoax. This is
purely political.”
The
decisions may fire up Trump’s base. But as Trump continues to struggle in the
polls against Biden, Thursday’s Supreme Court decisions may not help much,
especially since the base-goosing strategy likely won’t win over the suburban
and independent voters he needs.
“The
audience Trump speaks to is not the broad audience he needs,” said Republican
strategist Doug Heye. Moderate voters are likely “numb” to Trump’s tough talk,
Heye said, meaning the president's predictable response on Thursday won’t hurt
him — but it also won’t be a boon to his reelection.
The Trump
campaign on Thursday didn’t immediately follow the president’s lead — but it
did counterattack. It used the rulings to resurface a claim that Biden is
hiding his own records by failing to authorize the University of Delaware to
open the archives of his personal files after former staffer Tara Reade accused
him of sexual assault.
Trump’s
team made the claim even though Biden has said the university does not hold any
relevant files, and has instead asked the Senate and the National Archives to
open up their files, which he said is where any related documents would be
held.
“Democrats
want to talk about records?” the campaign tweeted. “They should be taking it up
with Joe Biden and the University of Delaware.”
Despite the
campaign’s effort to push attention to Biden, Trump continued to talk and tweet
about his own records all day.
The Supreme
Court’s decisions on the subpoenas postpones the release of any records for the
foreseeable future. In the New York case, the court said the prosecutor can ask
a grand jury for the documents but left open the possibility that Trump could
challenge the request on other grounds. In the congressional case, the court
sent the case back to a lower court to examine whether the House should narrow
its reason for seeking Trump’s records. Trump signaled he will continue to
fight both cases.
But even
though Trump may not have his financial ledgers publicly exposed before the
election, the decisions put Trump one step closer to possibly facing criminal
charges after he leaves office — a two-decades old Justice Department policy
protects sitting presidents from being indicted.
Investigators
have been trying to access Trump’s records for years to determine whether he
inflated his net worth, cheated on his taxes, owed money to foreign entities or
paid hush money to women alleging affairs with Trump in violation of campaign
finance laws.
The
president’s decision to maintain ownership of his sprawling company — despite a
pledge to put his business aside while in the White House — has created a vast
web of potential conflicts of interest, allegations of illegality and
accusations that Trump’s policies are driven by his financial interests.
Trump also
created suspicion when he became the first president in recent decades not to
release his tax records. Trump has claimed that an ongoing audit is preventing
him from opening up the documents. He repeated the claim on Thursday.
Despite
Trump's flurry of angry tweets and statements, White House press secretary
Kayleigh McEnany declared the court decisions “a win for the president” and
said House Democrats “were very much called out for their partisan games.”
“So leave
it to House Democrats who did a partisan impeachment, a political witch hunt
against the president,” she said. “And this was yet another part, only to be
rebuked by the Supreme Court.”
For more
than three years, Trump has lumped all the investigations he faces into one
line of attack at campaign rallies, on Twitter and in impromptu exchanges with
reporters. His aides at the White House and campaign send them out in emails
and texts, sometimes printing them on campaign merchandise.
Trump
supporters quickly followed his lead Thursday.
"For
almost four years, Democrats have been singularly focused on attacking
President Trump for political gain,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top
Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “Today’s decisions by the Supreme
Court sadly will not end the Democrats’ partisan obsession. Americans around
the country deserve better than the Democrats’ never-ending political games.
House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to put a positive spin on the rulings, but other
Democrats acknowledged that Trump had won, at least for now.
"While
defeated on his claim that he is above the law, Trump is now beyond the law
until after the November election,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas). “He may
not be able to outrun the law, but he is outrunning the clock — whining all the
way.”
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