RUSH: Well, as usual, I find myself all alone in analyzing the Supreme Court decisions today. I do not see myself as part of the conventional wisdom and, by the way, folks, that’s very comforting. I hate conventional wisdom. I hate being a conformist. I’m not one. I hate being part of the crowd. I hate being part of groupthink.
I just see this a completely different way than everybody I’ve heard talking about this on TV, although there have been a couple of exceptions. But the hatred for Donald Trump, even among certain analysts on Fox News, is just so obvious that everything is tainted.
It’s mind-boggling to me. Well, I overuse that phrase. Actually by now nothing is mind-boggling. It’s all predictable. Like I got a friend today really upset, really, really, really upset that media is not reporting that Joe Biden’s brain isn’t working. I said, “What do you think they’re gonna do? Why are you getting depressed the media is who they are? Do you think the media is gonna report anything negative on a Democrat presidential candidate?” They ain’t gonna do it.
John Hinderaker I think made an observation in a little post at Power Line, and this resonated with me. He said he used to believe that in the old Soviet Union when you had Tass and the other State-Run Media, he assumed that all of the, quote, unquote, journalists at State-Run Media say in the Soviet Union or even the ChiComs, were working with guns pointed at their heads, that they were forced against their will to report and write the way and what they did.
He says, you know, looking at the American Media today, I don’t think it’s the case. I think the American media loves being part of what they think is the elite political class. Nobody has to point a gun at their head to get them to shield Joe Biden. They instinctively will do it because they consider themselves part of the state. And I think that’s exactly right. I’ve not thought otherwise.
Like go to anywhere in the Drive-By Media, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, those people are not reporting under duress either from their own management, news directors, editors, or anywhere else in the Democrat Party. They are doing exactly what they want to do, they’re believing what they believe without threat. They are part of the problem. They’re not working against their will. They’re not being forced. And I don’t think they were in the old Soviet Union either. May have been, it’s some years ago.
Anyway, the point is the conventional wisdom on these Supreme Court rulings today is that Trump may as well resign, may as well quit, it’s over. Cy Vance is gonna get to see his tax records. Congress is gonna get to see his tax records, oh, my, it’s over. And then Trump doesn’t help things by tweeting what he’s tweeting. Trump ought to be high-fiving, if you ask me.
Well, okay. I’ll go through it. I will explain it for you. Did you see Pelosi’s presser? She didn’t even talk about it. She knows it’s a nothing burger for her. The subpoenas that her committees issued for Trump’s tax records die with this Congress. They don’t survive to the next Congress.
There isn’t gonna be any Trump tax record data produced by anybody for anybody before the election. Therefore, it’s useless to her. So what did she do in her presser? She started talking about Trump being a Russian agent again and then started blaming Trump for the unemployment rate. Here. Grab audio sound bite number 3. In two, one, hit it.
PELOSI: Supreme Court, including the president’s appointees, have declared that he is not above the law. The path that the Supreme Court has laid out is one that is clearly achievable by us in the lower court, and we will continue to go down that path. But whatever it is, it’s not good news for the president of the United States.
RUSH: Whatever it is.
PELOSI: And the chief justice specifically speaks to the fact that the president is not above the law.
RUSH: That was it. That was it. There was no crowing. There was no high-fiving. There was no celebrating, there was no promise to expose this fraud. There was no promise to see his tax records and have them blasted all over everywhere because she knows that her two committees were denied.
The court sent the case back to the lower court because the court said the lower court did not take into account seriously enough the separation of powers, that the lower court did not sufficiently give enough weight to idea that Congress might have been acting totally politically instead of with legitimate oversight.
There’s nothing for her to be happy about here, and that’s why she’s not. And in New York, Cyrus Vance, district attorney there — the upshot is that he and Pelosi were both temporarily blocked from seeing Trump’s tax records. And the only reason they wanted them is to get them before the election.
And I’m gonna tell you something else about this, folks. Are you telling me that in New York, where the IRS is, in Washington, where the IRS is, and we know the hatred for Donald Trump is everywhere. The idea that Trump’s tax records or related financial information has not leaked in four years, what does it tell you? That maybe it ain’t that big a deal anyway, that maybe there isn’t a whole lot there.
So let me run through this. I’ve digested all the commentary I had time to digest and all the analysis. And all morning this is what I found fascinating. All morning, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, doesn’t matter, they had chyron graphics at the bottom of the screen saying the New York DA and Congress cannot see Trump tax returns for now. That was the CliffsNotes version of the two rulings. Trump’s tax returns cannot be seen for now. The New York DA cannot get them for now, and Congress cannot get them for now. We’ll get into the reasons why in a minute.
Yet, when you tune into the panel discussions on both these networks, all you heard was, “This is a big defeat for the president. It’s a major defeat for the president. He’s gonna rue the day this happened. I don’t care what anybody else thinks. It’s a big, big, humiliating defeat for the president. Why, his two appointed justices even voted against him. It’s horrible.” And yet graphics the bottom of the screen, “New York DA, Congress cannot see Trump tax returns for now.”
Here’s the bottom line, and we’ll get into deeper analysis. The bottom line here, ladies and gentlemen, is that these rulings today from the Supreme Court are of no immediate political value to the Democrats in their quest to get rid of Donald Trump before the November election. And I’m gonna tell you this. I’ll bet you that you don’t even hear much about these two rulings after tonight, after the nighttime, the primate cable shows have their spin with this, come tomorrow, the next day, you’re not gonna be hearing much about it.
And you know why? Because nobody’s getting what they want. They’re not gonna see Trump’s tax records. They’re not going to be able to use them, the Democrats are not gonna be able to use them in any way prior to November. And after November it doesn’t matter. If Trump loses, big whoop. You know, they’ll go after him at the Southern District or maybe New York state just because of their vendettas. If he wins, I think they’ll continue to try to get him thrown out of office, whatever they try, but here’s another bottom line.
After everything that’s happened with Donald Trump, how many of you Trump supporters support Trump because he is a paragon of moral virtue and financial rectitude? How many of you support Trump because he is the creme de la creme when it comes to character, decency, morality? That’s not why Donald Trump is supported.
Donald Trump is supported because a majority of people in this country fear we are losing the country and they think he is the only guy in the Republican Party that has the guts to try to save it. And when the Access Hollywood video did not take him out, everybody should have figured a bunch of things out, and they keep holding out hope.
So a little bit more detailed analysis here, ladies and gentlemen. There were two decisions from the Supreme Court today, both of them 7-2. And in one the court ruled that the presidency does not have absolute immunity from subpoena. Now, they ruled this because for some reason this is the way Trump’s lawyers went about this. In order to keep the tax records private, Trump’s legal team, in lower court proceedings, tried to make the claim that the presidency, as an office is, has absolute immunity from subpoena.
Well, the justices looked at that, and they laughed. It’s a ridiculous claim. It’s never been asserted before. It’s never been upheld. All the Trump people needed to do was look at the Nixon experience with the Supreme Court and stuff and maybe try it a different way, which they will now, ’cause the court has sent the congressional subpoenas back to the lower court where it can be reargued.
Now the president’s team can come up with a new tactic rather than pleading absolute immunity. Court slam-dunks absolute immunity. They also ruled that there is not a heightened need — that’s a quote — that gives him any special privileges over any other average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill citizen. The chief justice wrote that Congress does not have an absolute right to subpoena a president’s personal records and that lower courts made a mistake in not considering separation of powers more carefully. Exactly what I said.
The Supreme Court’s chief justice said Congress also does not have an absolute right to subpoena a president’s personal records just like the president doesn’t have absolute immunity. It’s the “absolute” that gums up the works here. But what happened on the two congressional subpoena cases, two congressional committees subpoena Trump’s tax returns. Lower court says, “Fine. You can go get ’em.”
Supreme Court looks at the case and says, “Lower court did not seriously consider whether the Democrats were acting in a legitimate oversight capacity or whether it was just raw politics. They didn’t give enough deference to the fact that Congress may have been overstepping its authority. Send the case back.”
This case isn’t gonna be retried before November, folks. So Pelosi and her committees are not gonna get Trump’s tax records before then. Because there is no way this case is gonna be sent back to the lower court and retried within what? We got 117 days before the election. It just isn’t gonna happen.
Now, people in the Drive-By Media wanted this to be a slam-dunk defeat for Trump so badly that they’re acting like it is. No matter what the court’s rulings were today, they’re treating this as a slam-dunk, humiliating loss, because eventually Cy Vance and the congressional committees, they may not be able to see Trump’s tax records now, but they’re eventually going to be able to. It’s a huge loss for the president. Well, it isn’t.
The Trump v. Vance case — now, Cyrus Vance III or IV or whatever, he is the New York district attorney. He took over for Robert Morgenthau III or IV or whatever who was the son of the previous Morgenthau II or III as of now. Cyrus Vance hates Trump, these guys all hate Trump in New York. They made a move to get Trump’s tax records. This is all related to Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and Avenatti and all that.
Trump sued Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, to block his subpoena seeking Trump’s financial records on this basis of absolute immunity, and Roberts, the chief justice, laughed at that, you can see it in the ruling. Even the dissenting justices laughed at the claim that the president has absolute immunity from congressional or any other law enforcement subpoena or attempt to enforce the law, what have you.
Now, the court did not order Trump to turn over his records. If you happen to be watching when the rulings were first released shortly after 10 o’clock — so about 10:15 — the Drive-Bys were waiting for it at 10 o’clock, they were breathlessly waiting, they could barely contain themselves. They got their panel discussions going, and nobody knows anything, and the anchors are asking, “So what do you think’s gonna happen here, Zeke?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“What do you think’s gonna happen, Fred?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think’s gonna happen, Judge?”
Nobody knew anything for 15 minutes. It was comical to watch. People that didn’t know a thing trying to sound like experts about it. Then the rulings came, and one of the first things that they got wrong was that Trump was ordered to turn over his records. He was not. As everybody knows now, the court did not order Trump to turn over his financial records. They sent the case back to the district court, which gives Trump’s attorneys another opportunity to argue it from a different perspective than absolute immunity.
I gotta take a break. He was never told, the court never said you gotta surrender your records, as was first reported. It’s the same old thing, folks. You just cannot believe what you read, hear, or see in today’s mainstream media, particularly the first time that they report on something.
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RUSH: Okay, so here’s another bottom line for you: It might well be a year or more before these cases get settled again — particularly the congressional case, which has been sent down to the lower court. In fact… Well, let me not jump too far ahead. This may not be the last time the Supreme Court sees these cases. They’ve gotta go back and be retried, and then I don’t…
The president is gonna do everything he can to extend this and play this out — delay this — ’cause everybody knows November is the target date. And in the case of the New York DA, Cyrus Vance… You know, this is a grand jury subpoena that has been issued for Trump’s tax records, and you know the drill on the grand jury. Everything there is supposed to be secret.
Hardy-har-har. Laugh, laugh. Wink, wink.
But I wouldn’t be surprised — and I know many of you are gonna scoff at this. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t such disappointment at both the New York DA’s office today and Congress that they eventually lose interest in all of this, because it’s of no value to them if they don’t get this stuff before November. And it isn’t going to be made available to them, either the New York DA or the two congressional committees.
Trump’s tax records are not gonna be made available before November. The political value — and that’s all any of this is. There’s no major, great law at stake here. This a pure, raw politics, and after November, it ceases to have very much value at all. And I’m telling you that because of that, there’s probably masked disappointment today where you’re being told that there are high-five celebrations.
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RUSH: So just to repeat and to try to stay consistent, the Supreme Court today, contrary to what you might have heard at the outset, did not — and they never did — they did not order Trump to turn over his tax records. Some media initially reported that ’cause that’s what they wanted the ruling to say. And so they just, like everything else, just assumed it was gonna say what they wanted it to say, and they reported it when it first came out, realizing that that’s what first would be heard, people would believe it, then they go back and fix it if necessary. The truth is not what matters to them.
So here is the court’s ruling on the Cy Vance case, the New York DA, the grand jury. “The arguments here and in the Court of Appeals were limited to absolute immunity and heightened need.” Meaning, that’s the only way they could rule on this because that’s where the Trump lawyers went. The Trump lawyers tried to deny access to Trump’s tax records by claiming that a president has absolute immunity from any law enforcement attempt to enforce the law at him. And the court laughed at that.
The Trump team should have seen what happened to Nixon when he tried this kind of thing. But the point is the court is saying that the arguments they ruled on were limited to absolute immunity and heightened need. “The Court of Appeals,” i.e., the lower court, “has directed that the case may be returned to the District Court, where the president may raise further arguments as appropriate. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
So the Supreme Court held with the Court of Appeals decision which had sent the case back to the lower court, and the reason the Court of Appeals sent the case back is because they didn’t think that the congressional committees subpoenaing Trump’s records were actually conducting oversight rather than raw politics.
So now the upshot is the case gets to be retried. And the president’s lawyers can use something other than absolute immunity. They can come up with another tactic, some other premise to deny these congressional committees Trump’s tax records. Well, I’m sorry, gang, whatever happens, it ain’t gonna happen by November. The courts do not move this quickly.
So Pelosi’s congressional committees are not gonna see Trump’s tax records. And, therefore, they’re not gonna be able to use them in any way to get rid of Trump before November or to help them defeat Trump in November. So it won’t be long before they lose interest in it.
On principle, you say it’s a loss for the president because the court did not tell Pelosi to go to hell. The court did not tell Congress to go to hell. The court did not agree with the president that he has absolute immunity. So if you want to look at it that way, yeah, it’s a loss for Trump. But the upshot is Trump doesn’t have to turn over his financial records, so if you ask me, if that was the objective and they don’t get to see ’em, it’s a win.
Now, let’s go to the Cyrus Vance case, the New York DA and his little grand jury there. This case is the one that was the more surprising to legal beagles because they thought that Trump was gonna lose this one big and that Cy Vance would be able to see these tax records next week and it’d be over for Trump.
The name of the case is Trump v. Mazars, M-a-z-a-r-s. In this case Trump challenged a series of subpoenas from the House — I’m sorry, this is the Pelosi case — from the House for his financial records. In the same 7-2 split, the court overturned lower court rulings ordering Mazars to release the information.
Once again the chief justice didn’t put an end to the case. This time he warned that Congress didn’t have supremacy over the executive. In other words, Congress does not have, even in its oversight role, total supremacy over the executive branch. It’s a separation-of-powers issue. So the Cyrus Vance New York DA case is a temporary loss. But on the tactical side it’s a win.
The House case is a loss on both fronts. It’s both a temporary loss and a tactical loss for the Democrats because they’re not gonna see Trump’s tax records anytime soon, as I have explained. Now, Trump obviously would have hoped for a ruling that the Supreme Court told Congress to go pound sand, that there’s no way they’re ever gonna see the records because Trump does have absolute immunity, but they didn’t do that. And it’s on that basis that the media is all claiming Trump ultimately lost today.
But, folks, it is not the case. Trump’s tax records are not gonna be seen by either the Democrats in Congress or the New York DA who want to see those records ’cause they’re convinced that those tax records prove that Trump is a fraud, that he’s a cheat, that he’s a liar and that he’s not a billionaire.
You know what they really want those tax records for? Trump’s been out there bragging he’s this rich and that rich and he maneuvered Forbes magazine into calling him a billionaire, and they would really love those tax records to prove that Trump’s not as rich as he says he is. I’m telling you it is that banal. It is that childish.
Now, they also want the tax records ’cause they think that there’s all kinds of evidence in there that Trump has cheated, that he hasn’t paid his fair share. There’s a particular year in which Trump wrote off millions and millions and millions of dollars that were allowed by the IRS, and they would love for an examination of that particular year to be shown to be fraudulent.
But they don’t know. It’s kind of like granting immunity to a witness that you haven’t interviewed, you don’t know what he’s gonna say. You never do that. You never grant immunity to a witness if you’re a lawyer, you never grant immunity to a witness when you don’t know what he’s gonna say. Well, these guys, the Congress and Vance have invested everything in their latest efforts to get Trump into his tax records. And now they’re not gonna see them.
And they have told themselves over the years that there’s all kinds of evidence in there that would nail Trump, and there’s all kinds of evidence in there that would make Trump’s voters abandon him, there’s all kind of evidence that prove Trump is a lying, stinking fraud and that it is reasonable to hate this guy. And now they’re not gonna get to see it. Nobody’s gonna see Trump’s tax records for months. Nobody’s gonna see Trump’s tax records before November. If ever. And that’s the bottom line.
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RUSH: Bryce in Amarillo, Texas, you’re next on the EIB Network. Great to have you with us today, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It’s great to be here. I just heard you commenting about how the Democrat Party thinks that there might be some way to dissuade or discourage us if we see what’s in Trump’s tax returns. But the truth is if we see what’s in there and he paid less, it’s gonna do nothing but excite his base, because we all want to pay less taxes. So we’ll see that he’s the same kind of guy we are, and we want to pay less too, and that’s what he’s here for.
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you, whether that’s spot-on accurate or not, I don’t know. But I do believe that there’s nothing in these tax returns that’s gonna make Trump’s base go, “Oh, my God, did we misjudge this guy. Oh, no.” You know how ridiculous this is? Some of these Democrats, these congressional committees, really think that the Trump tax records contain evidence of payments from Putin through a phony foundation, you know, like the Clintons did.
The Clintons took money from Putin. The Clintons took money from the Russians and they ignored it, it was no big deal. They really believed that there will be evidence of Trump taking money from Putin as a secret agent of the KGB. It’s fascinating to watch what these people literally have got themselves talked into believing.
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RUSH: One other thing, too. We referenced the Trump legal team absolute immunity. And there is a school of thought out there that this was actually not a mistake or bad lawyering but in fact was brilliant, to hinge your case on something absurd like this, absolute immunity, knowing you’re gonna get struck down, which is what you want if you don’t think you’re gonna win the case.
If you think… If you’re Trump and the lawyers, and if you think that your tax records are gonna someday be made public, then what you want is a delay, and that’s what they got. They got a delay in the decision of both of these cases. Because the upshot is that Trump’s tax records will not be given to Congress or the Manhattan DA for now.
And “for now” means they will not be presented to the Manhattan DA, the grand jury, or Congress, those two committees, by November. Which makes them useless politically. Trump’s tax records are now useless. They only had value if they could somehow be made public and therefore be used prior to the November election.