Judge Green lights Trump Tax Probe by NY DA // Courthouse News

Judge Green lights Trump Tax Probe by NY DA  // Courthouse News

by Adam Klasfeld

 MANHATTAN (CN) — Describing the White House’s expansive view of executive power as dangerous to democracy, a federal judge on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s second attempt to scuttle the probe of his finances in New York.

“As this court suggested in its earlier ruling in this litigation, that notion, applied as so robustly proclaimed by the president’s advocates, is as unprecedented and far-reaching as it is perilous to the rule of law and other bedrock constitutional principles on which this country was founded and by which it continues to be governed,” U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote.

The 103-page opinion follows an initial ruling late last year where Judge Marrero described Trump’s claim about absolute immunity from criminal investigation more fitting for a king than a president. Marrero’s concerns have only amplified since that time. 

Trump’s attorney William Consovoy told the Second Circuit that local authorities would be temporarily powerless to probe the president even if he shot somebody on the middle of Fifth Avenue.  

“Short of that time lapse, they argued, ‘nothing could be done’ by the authorities to prosecute the crime,” Marrero noted, quoting the oral arguments from last October. 

Spurning that vision of executive power earlier last month, the Supreme Court allowed Trump one more opportunity to challenge Vance’s investigation on other grounds, including overbreadth, bad faith or illegal harassment. 

Marrero said that Trump used this window to seek the same ruling the high court rejected. 

“At its core, it amounts to absolute immunity through a back door, an entry point through which not only a president but also potentially other persons and entities, public and private, could effectively gain cover from judicial process,” Marrero wrote. 

Trump’s legal team wasted little time on an appeal, sending notice to the Second Circuit and asking Judge Marrero to temporarily stay his decision until the appeals court can review it. 

“Given the seriousness of this dispute, the status quo should be preserved so that the Second Circuit and Supreme Court can hear the President’s claims,” Consovoy wrote in a 6-page motion Thursday. “Consideration for ‘the Presidency itself’ requires at least that much.” 

Trump’s attorney is asking for an identical stay before the Second Circuit and the Supreme Court. 

In the president’s flurry of appeals, lawsuits and challenges, Judge Marrero saw a pattern of delay tactics aimed at crippling the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation.