DC Circuit Tosses Emoluments Lawsuit By Members Of Congress | Talking Points Memo

If ever there were a political question a court wanted to avoid the Emoluments Clause case against Donald Trump is it.  Lacking a personal stake 215 members of Congress - including the entire Democratic House caucus (while in the minority) - challenged his blatant disregard of the Constitutional prohibition of profiting from foreign potentates.  As Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and ordinary court suitors crowd the bars and halls of his pricey hotel next door the President who refuses to disclose his finances, rakes in the cash and basks in adulation and flattery.

But in Blumenthal v. Trump the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was having none of it.  The Members of Congress will have to win politically not in the courts.  The Justice Department has declared him immune from prosecution and in any event is led by a loyalist.  So like Brecht's judge in the Caucasian Chalk Circle, Trump opens court with the words "I receive". - gwc
DC Circuit Tosses Emoluments Lawsuit By Members Of Congress | Talking Points Memo

By Josh Kovensky

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February 7, 2020 10:32 a.m.

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A D.C. appeals court threw out a lawsuit on Friday accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, ruling that the lawmakers who filed the case lacked standing to sue.

Democratic members of Congress sued Trump in 2017 over his alleged violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits presidents from receiving foreign payments while in office.

The lawmakers had alleged that Trump’s continued ownership of his D.C. hotel and other businesses meant that he was receiving payments from foreign officials.

But in a per curiam opinion a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit ruled that the lawmakers could not use the judiciary to settle the dispute. Justice Department attorneys representing Trump in the case had argued that Congress cannot resort to the courts to resolve disputes with the executive branch.

“The Members can, and likely will, continue to use their weighty voices to make their case to the American people, their colleagues in the Congress and the President himself, all of whom are free to engage that argument as they see fit,” the opinion reads. “But we will not — indeed we cannot — participate in this debate. The Constitution permits the Judiciary to speak only in the context of an Article III case or controversy and this lawsuit presents neither.”