Trump wins appeal to block McGahn testimony

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

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President Donald Trump scored a major legal victory on Friday when a federal appeals court panel ruled former White House counsel Don McGahn can defy a congressional subpoena for his testimony.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s opinion overturned a lower court decision requiring McGahn’s testimony and told the judge presiding over the case to dismiss it outright. The ruling is a blow to House Democrats’ attempts to break the Trump administration’s intransigent stance that it can block Congress from talking to witnesses. McGahn was a key source of information for Robert Mueller and Democrats have been angling to secure an interview to find out what he told the special counsel.

The 2-1 ruling comes a little more than three weeks after the Senate acquitted Trump on largely unrelated impeachment charges involving his posture toward Ukraine.

 

 

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Echoing arguments Justice Department attorneys had made in the case, Griffith warned that allowing the House to use the courts to enforce the subpoena against McGahn would lead to a flood of hard-to-resolve suits pitting congressional imperatives against executive branch interests.

“The walk from the Capitol to our courthouse is a short one, and if we resolve this case today, we can expect Congress’s lawyers to make the trip often,” wrote Griffith, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

Griffith said opening the courts to that kind of litigation would also discourage lawmakers and the executive branch from the more traditional method of resolving such subpoena fights: negotiation. Congress has long used several tools — cutting off funding, holding up presidential nominees, even impeachment — to help persuade the executive branch.

“Adjudicating these disputes would displace this flexible system of negotiation, accommodation, and (sometimes) political retaliation with a zero-sum game decided by judicial diktat,” Griffith wrote.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/28/trump-wins-appeal-to-block-mcgahn-testimony-118219

 

Another power overreach fails, another lower court ruling overturned. 

 

Another easy Trump win.

[TBoneTX 45,309]

I'm surprised about any court victories, honestly.  Was certainly expecting this to go the other way.

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,370]

Tired of winning