https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-power-to-subpoena-trumps-tax-returns-is/90878/
What a cornucopia of constitutional questions will be opened up in federal appeals court at New York tomorrow. That’s when President Trump will get the first hearing in his appeal of a ruling that his tax returns must be handed over in a criminal probe being pursued by the district attorney of New York County. The case is so hot — such a teaching moment — that it’s going to be aired on C-Span.
Pull up a chair, we say. That’s certainly what we’re going to do. Particularly because the liberals are laughing at the president and carrying on about how no one is above the law. The problem there is that the law — the Constitution is a law, after all — doles out a number of immunities. Like the fact that members of congress are privileged from arrest when they are traveling to or from a sitting of the legislature.
Plus, for anything said on the floor of either house, no member of Congress may be questioned in any other place. In everyday lingo, it means that for anything our legislators say at work, they can’t be sued or prosecuted in federal, state, municipal court, or the United Nations. What would an ordinary mortal — a newspaperman, say — give for such dispensation? Is Congress above the law? No, that is the law.
What is so newsworthy about this case — known as Trump v. Vance, the latter being the Manhattan d.a. — is that it represents the first time in the history of America “that a county prosecutor has subjected the President of the United States to criminal process.” That’s the way it’s put in the president’s opening brief. Think of it. For more than 200 years, prosecutors have resisted temptation, until Mr. Vance.
