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The Coronavirus May Keep Trump's Financial Records Under Wraps Forever
On Monday, the Supreme Court took the drastic step of postponing upcoming oral arguments for an indefinite period of time in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In its press release on the decision, the court noted that arguments in 1918 were postponed due to the flu pandemic and the argument calendar was shortened in 1793 and 1798 due to yellow fever outbreaks.
Even if the once-in-a-century postponement is not unprecedented, these particular circumstances may be. Three of the cases that have been postponed in the March 23–25 and March 30–April 1 sessions revolved around extraordinary assertions of executive power by the Trump administration to keep third-party records of the president’s finances from congressional and local investigators.
Nobody knows how long such extraordinary measures might be necessary to protect the public from COVID-19, but President Donald Trump said on Monday that experts had advised him that they might be necessary through “July, August.” If the cases that have been bumped get moved into the fall calendar and Trump loses the November election, these cases could then easily be moot.
....
However, the postponement of these cases has given the chief a great opportunity to possibly remove them entirely from his docket without ruling on a controversial political question in the heat of an election season. We have no idea when—or how—these arguments might be able to still go forward. If, however, the case is postponed to the fall or later, a decision could conceivably be pushed well into 2021. (It is possible the Supreme Court follows the path of some circuit courts and moves arguments to teleconference—justices will be allowed to participate on a court conference scheduled for Friday by telephone, but doing arguments telephonically would be unprecedented.) When the 116th Congress ends and 117th Congress begins on Jan. 3, 2021, those subpoenas would become invalid and the case would become moot. The subpoenas would then have to be reissued, and the case would have to go through the entire court process again. If Trump is out of office in 2021, Congress may see little reason to relitigate the fight and Trump could successfully escape having to show his taxes to the country
Even if the once-in-a-century postponement is not unprecedented, these particular circumstances may be. Three of the cases that have been postponed in the March 23–25 and March 30–April 1 sessions revolved around extraordinary assertions of executive power by the Trump administration to keep third-party records of the president’s finances from congressional and local investigators.
Nobody knows how long such extraordinary measures might be necessary to protect the public from COVID-19, but President Donald Trump said on Monday that experts had advised him that they might be necessary through “July, August.” If the cases that have been bumped get moved into the fall calendar and Trump loses the November election, these cases could then easily be moot.
....
However, the postponement of these cases has given the chief a great opportunity to possibly remove them entirely from his docket without ruling on a controversial political question in the heat of an election season. We have no idea when—or how—these arguments might be able to still go forward. If, however, the case is postponed to the fall or later, a decision could conceivably be pushed well into 2021. (It is possible the Supreme Court follows the path of some circuit courts and moves arguments to teleconference—justices will be allowed to participate on a court conference scheduled for Friday by telephone, but doing arguments telephonically would be unprecedented.) When the 116th Congress ends and 117th Congress begins on Jan. 3, 2021, those subpoenas would become invalid and the case would become moot. The subpoenas would then have to be reissued, and the case would have to go through the entire court process again. If Trump is out of office in 2021, Congress may see little reason to relitigate the fight and Trump could successfully escape having to show his taxes to the country
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/trump-supreme-court-mazars-deutsche-bank-vance-delay.html
Just another frustrating piece of this crisis...
I believe this and the ACA were the last “blockbuster” cases to be argued this term, so we can probably expect them to still release some of the more damaging anti-LBGTQ and anti-abortion opinions on the earlier cases.
