Thursday on MSNBC, network legal analyst Neal Katyal said President Donald Trump “lost resoundingly” with a Supreme Court ruling that subpoenas for information about his personal finances could not be blocked by presidential immunity.
Katyal also predicted Trump’s tax returns would “come out before the 2020 election.”
Katyal said, “Trump shouldn’t be happy about this. The fact is, he lost. He lost resoundingly, 7-2, including his own appointees to the court, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch. The court, by seven justices, rejected his broad claims of immunity. For a president who is sworn to take care that the laws be faithfully executed in our Constitution, the Supreme Court is saying these are bogus claims. It’s true the case is now going to go back to New York and to the D.C. courts, but the key question is, what’s left? With the Manhattan case, very little.”
He continued, “It’s very hard. I think for Trump to assert any form of immunity. With Congress, maybe he’s got more arguments back in the trial court. But nobody thought that the House was going to win immediate release of the tax returns or anything like that. This is, I think, the best of what the challengers thought. The only thing in which Trump won anything today, is he now possibly can delay this after election day and delay getting all the information to New York, but I think that’s doubtful. Look, these cases can move very quickly. The Nixon’s tape case was three months. Bush versus Gore in 2000, 36 days. This is all about the election of 2020. I expect Cy Vance to move incredibly fast. He described Trump as having little shield left in New York. It’s not a little shield. It’s a paper-thin shield at best.”
He added, “I think it’s totally possible for all of this to come out before the 2020 election in terms of New York’s prosecutors getting this information and acting on it. So I would caution all those folks who have been listening to this for the last half hour and say this is a mixed bag. It is not. If I’m Donald Trump, I’m scared right now. Whether or not it comes before or after the 2020 election, Cy Vance is going to get this material, and it looks pretty damaging to Donald Trump.”
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