Thursday, November 11, 2021

OH NOES! A DEE-LAY!

Yeah, not really. Let me just get an answer in to a question probably being asked right now: So here's where we are.  Trump wants to freeze the status quo, which is to say, get his stay on the release of documents, until the court can hear the case.  The panel may agree to that because the harm is de minimus.  The ARA knows that, and prefers one argument rather than two (although a preliminary rejection of Trump's request would moot the entire case.).  The question is:  can Trump get even that, given the state of the proceedings:  they don't have a strong argument, or they'd have made it by now; and the Memorandum Opinion of the Court is pretty damned good.  The Court has to rule off of that at this point.  It may prefer to tell Trump to pound sand.  It may prefer to have it's own say, and block the Archives until they have a chance to tell them what to do on their own.

Of course, the panel could also tell Trump "You should have filed this a few days earlier, to give yourself more time for appeals.  You knew about this deadline, why should we help you when you can't help yourself (i.e., his arguments are pretty damned lame)?"

So, we'll see.  The court might prefer to moot Trump's case on their own, and not because of circumstances.  OTOH, they might prefer to lighten their docket by mooting the case and letting it basically fall away.  I don't think the legal issues raised here are all that compelling or in need of adjudication.  I'm honestly not betting either way, except that this won't be tied up in the courts for months on end; and I don't think the Supremes want to touch it with a club.

And because I didn't post this until late:
Hearing is set for November 30, which at first looks like a no good, terrible, very bad thing.  But consider this:

The White House on Thursday also notified a lawyer for Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, that Biden would waive any executive privilege that would prevent Meadows from cooperating with the committee, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The committee has subpoenaed Meadows and more than two dozen other people as part of its investigation.

His lawyer, George Terwilliger, issued a statement in response saying Meadows "remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege.”

“It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict,” Terwilliger said.

A ruling in early December could bring this nonsense to a halt, because all of these cases are going to be in the D.C. Circuit.  It doesn't surprise me they did this, but I still expect the Supremes to say "Thanks, but no thanks."  Especially since Congress and the POTUS agree on this, the records are government records, and Trump is just a private citizens now.

Courage.*

*I will just note that Mazars involved Trump's personal financial documents, not government records.  And it involved a subpoena issued against a sitting President.  That case has been batted around a lot in this matter.  It has no application here, however.
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