President Donald Trump has tried for more than three years to dismantle our system of checks and balances and sweep aside any source of accountability…
President Donald Trump has tried for more than three years to dismantle our system of checks and balances and sweep aside any source of accountability for his abuses, be it the courts, Congress or the states. Thursday’s Supreme Court rulings made clear that checks and balances still apply and that accountability is coming. The decisions create a path for the House of Representatives and a New York grand jury to obtain the president’s financial information. This is an important vindication of the principle that no person is above the law.
At the same time, the practical impact of the court’s decisions will be to further delay the House and the grand jury from actually securing records, further delaying the legislative reforms and real accountability for abuses that our country so desperately needs. Both Congress and the Manhattan grand jury should redouble their efforts to get the president’s financial information, and both seem well positioned eventually to prevail — but the court’s rulings won’t save us from the president’s abuses right now. Only we, the American people, can demand that our public officials pursue the reforms and accountability we need.
As the director of a government ethics watchdog, I have advocated for thorough investigations of the president’s numerous misdeeds, including his obstruction of justice in connection with the Russia investigation, his apparent campaign finance crimes and failure to disclose his debts to his attorney Michael Cohen to the American people, his attempts to bully and bribe Ukraine into investigating his 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and the unending corruption and conflicts of interest that stem from his decision to keep his businesses while serving as president. Thursday’s rulings lay the groundwork for these kinds of investigations to move forward for this president and future presidents.
Just as the court unanimously held that Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton could be subjected to judicial process during their time in office, the court in Thursday’s Vance decision reaffirmed that state criminal investigations can proceed against a sitting president. Like their predecessors, five justices concluded that “the president is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need,” and two other justices agreed.
