In one case, the high court ruled 7-2 in favor of Manhattan D. A. Cyrus Vance, who is conducting a criminal investigation into the president’s business dealings and hush-money payments.
Two Supreme Court rulings Thursday will permit Manhattan prosecutors to access troves of President Trump’s business records and tax returns, but the court has pressed pause on Congress’ pursuit, CBS News digital reporter Melissa Quinn and campaign reporter Nicole Sganga report. In a momentous defeat for the president in his efforts to shield his personal financial information from state investigators, the high court ruled 7-2 in favor of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. Vance is conducting a criminal investigation into the president’s business dealings and hush-money payments made to two women who alleged affairs with the president years before he was elected. Trump-appointed justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. The justices sent the dispute back to the lower courts.
President Trump responded to a question about the decisions Thursday at an event with Hispanic leaders at the White House, reports CBS News political unit associate producer Eleanor Watson. “Well, the rulings were basically starting all over again, sending everything back down to the lower courts, and you start all over again, so, from a certain point I’m satisfied. From another point, I’m not satisfied, because frankly this is a political witch hunt, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, it’s a pure witch hunt, it a hoax, just like the Mueller investigation was a hoax that I won.” Mr. Trump went on to call the ruling “purely political” and said that New York has turned into a “hellhole.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, “Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding. We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need.”
Vance is seeking business records and tax returns dating to 2011 from Mazars USA, Mr. Trump’s longtime accounting firm. But the president and his attorneys had rebuffed Vance’s efforts to obtain his financial information, arguing the president has “absolute immunity” from state criminal proceedings while in office. The high court, however, rejected Mr. Trump’s assertion of absolute immunity from state criminal subpoenas. In a statement after the ruling, Vance hailed the decision as “a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one — not even a president — is above the law.” Jay Sekulow, the president’s personal attorney, said in a statement the legal team “will now proceed to raise additional constitutional and legal issues in the lower courts.”
Mr. Trump promptly reacted to the court’s decision on Twitter, Thursday, calling the outcome “a political prosecution.” The president continued to tweet, “Courts in the past have given “broad deference”. BUT NOT ME!” Mr. Trump has gone to great lengths to shield his business records and tax returns from public view, mounting legal challenges to subpoenas issued by Vance and a trio of Democrat-led congressional committees for his personal information. Both sets of subpoenas sought disclosures from Mr. Trump’s accountants and bankers – Deutsche Bank and Capital One – not from Mr. Trump himself. Both firms have signaled their compliance with the high court’s ruling. While the president vowed during the 2016 presidential campaign to release his tax returns once an IRS audit was complete, he has not done so, raising questions from his political opponents as to whether the records would shed light on his vast business dealings.
FROM THE CANDIDATES
JOE BIDEN
After a short tour at a stair manufacturing factory outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden took off his new N95 mask and debuted his manufacturing plan, CBS News campaign reporter Bo Erickson reports. “Donald Trump loves to talk and talk and talk. After 3.5 years of big promises what do the American people have to show for all of the talk?” Biden pitched his “Build Back Better” plan to increase jobs and assist the middle class. With the pandemic impacting so many families, Biden accused the president of using the strife to his advantage.
“Donald Trump may believe pitting Americans versus Americans may benefit him. I don’t,” Biden said. He ticked through investments of hundreds of billions of dollars into American-made products and research and development to compete with China. Biden offered no overall price tag for the plan but claimed at least 5 million additional jobs would be produced. He also reiterated that he’d return the corporate income tax rate to 28% and added a warning shot to Amazon that the days of them “paying nothing…will be over.”
Throughout the speech, Biden briefly accused the president of defending the Confederate flag and directing federal PPP loans to big business instead of small “mom and pop” businesses, taking specific issue with individual chain restaurants receiving pandemic-relief loans. Biden’s more protectionist plan has been complimented by supporters of progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and is a stark departure from Biden’s economic voting record, as he voted in favor of NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements which his primary rivals said cost America thousands of jobs.
TRUMP CAMPAIGN
Vice President Mike Pence, campaigning in Pennsylvania, focused on the country’s economic recovery amid a public health pandemic and said the choice for voters this election cycle has never been clearer. CBS News campaign reporter Musadiq Bidar says Pence promised voters will be “hearing a lot about the future and a lot about the choice” they will make at the polls this November. “It is a choice between continuing to grow and strengthen the American economy,” Pence said, “versus more taxes, more government, more regulation and the kind of economic stagnation that that’s always brought.”
Pence spent Thursday on a bus tour from Lancaster to Philadelphia. At a roundtable on re-opening the economy in Malvern, Pence talked about the differences between President Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. “Where President Trump unleashed American energy, we know that under Joe Biden the war on coal would be back,” Pence said. “Joe Biden not long ago said that coal miners needed to ‘learn to code,'” Pence added. He said going forward, President Trump will build on the momentum from the administration’s first term. “We think 2021 could be one the greatest years in the history of the American economy,” Pence projected. “But it is all going to be the choice the American people make.” Biden was also campaigning in Pennsylvania – just a couple of hours north of Malvern in Dunmore, a point Pence acknowledged, saying, “I know Joe Biden is down the road talking about raising taxes.” He added, “President Trump wants to put money in the pockets of working Americans” and said Mr. Trump is also open to another round of direct stimulus checks to support Americans.
CBS News campaign reporter Zak Hudak says Lancaster County, where Pence began his day, was the largest county President Trump won in Pennsylvania in 2016. A 20-point lead there gave him 137,145 votes, the fourth most from any county in the state. Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania by roughly 44,000 votes out of more than 6 million cast in the state, the narrowest margin in a presidential election for that state in 176 years.
But as the population of the longtime Republican stronghold has grown, it has become more Democratic.
