So attenuated and abstract
Emoluments? What emoluments?? I don’t see any emoluments; do you see any emoluments???
A constitutional challenge to President Trump’s continued ownership of his businesses has been ordered dismissed by a federal appeals court.
The case was brought by the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland, arguing that Trump had violated the domestic and foreign emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution by accepting money from state and foreign governments via his Washington hotel and business empire.
A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled unanimously that the attorneys general did not have the standing to bring the lawsuit and instructed a lower court to dismiss the lawsuit.
Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the opinion: “The District and Maryland’s interest in enforcing the Emoluments Clauses is so attenuated and abstract that their prosecution of this case readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts, which were created to resolve real cases and controversies between the parties.”
And the emoluments case is not real because…erm…
All three of the judges were appointed by Republican presidents.
This case is not the only emoluments challenge against President Trump. Another federal court is still considering a lawsuit brought by Democratic members of Congress.
…
Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh issued a joint statement that said the panel of judges “got it wrong,” and that they will continue to pursue their legal options.
They said the court “failed to acknowledge the most extraordinary circumstance of all: President Trump is brazenly profiting from the Office of the President in ways that no other President in history ever imagined and that the founders expressly sought — in the Constitution — to prohibit,” Frosh and Racine wrote.
The pair said they would continue their legal efforts to “hold President Trump accountable” for what they viewed as his violation of the emoluments clauses.
Checks and balances: do we even have any?
Only so long as they are respected by the enforcement branch of the government, which is…ooops…the President.
Well, Trump is getting the checks. I’m not sure about his balance.
B-dum-TISH!
The adjudication of “standing” is often weird and fraught, and is doubly so when challenging the constitutionality of government actions, policies, or laws. Here’s a very informative cartoon discussion of the topic. The other lawsuit brought by the Democratic members of Congress has much clearer standing, but a sufficiently ideological judge (or panel of judges) could still hold that they are not harmed by the President’s actions in a legal sense, leaving impeachment as the only means to hold the President accountable for violations of constitutional limits on his power. And no matter how clear Trump’s violations of the Constitution — or how clear his other corrupt acts, outright crimes, and general malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance of his duties — Mitch McConnell’s Senate will never vote to impeach him. Because this is the timeline in which democracy crumbles, apparently.