Joe: Trump Thought Supreme Court Judges Would Be Like Judge Cannon

Returning to politics, the Supreme Court has cleared the way for House Democrats to finally access Donald Trump's tax returns. The former president has fought for years to protect those records from the House Ways and Means Committee. The decision came in a brief one-page order that noted there were no dissenting votes, meaning the House Ways and Means Committee, which has been seeking Trump's tax documents since 2019, can now try to access them. the materials before Republicans take control of the House in January. Committee Chairman Richard Neal welcomed the decision, while the panel's top Republican, Congressman Kevin Brady, accused the Supreme Court of citing the opening of a dangerous new political battlefield where no citizen is safe Joe, This has been a long time coming, like I said, it's been years and years and years of people trying to get Donald Trump's tax returns through his presidential campaigns and now with two months or less of Democrats in power in the House They are finally going to have them in their hands.

Well, they are, and we're going to talk about quite a few other topics this morning regarding the legislation. challenges like spurious challenges that Donald Trump has made to the Supreme Court of the United States and to John Meacham, one after another after another of Trump's spurious claims, whether it's about his taxes, whether it's about, you know, his stolen election conspiracies , about privileges, huh. whether it's about the Special Master, we're seeing over and over again the Supreme Court of the United States and these issues that involve Madisonian checks and balances, we're seeing this

court

stand firm and really draw a straight line between them and the USV Nixon. case, uh, back in 1974.

Yes, it's important to remember that the

court

did the right thing in 1974, uh, in July, it was the decision that had to turn over that very incriminating tape and that Nixon, after asking the question, is there some air in I think it was the phrase, was there something that gave him to try not to follow it and realizing that there wasn't, then he obeyed the rule of law? One of the ironies of Richard Nixon's life is that he broke the law, but then he followed custom and the law and left office. An interesting question going forward and I think we know the answer is whether Donald Trump has the ability to follow the rule of law.

We have seen it time and time again. The attacks on him, very much in the tradition of Roy Cohn, his former lawyer, who was Joe McCarthy's lawyer, came around the anniversary of Joe McCarthy being censured in the early 1950s, but what do you know that the code used to say is no Tell me what the law is Tell me what the

judge

is I think it's good news that the Supreme Court may not agree with the substance of their decisions, but as you say in these important cases, they have stood firm in the Constitution. The question is going to be now.

What does the special counsel do in all these various matters? What is the department of justice? The justice department has now made its decision by appointing a special prosecutor, but we are entering a very complicated period that, you know, I say it's complicated, it's not that complicated. The complicated question is whether someone who is above the law is an American president or, let's be very clear, a former American president who is actually above the law. I say no, I think most Americans

would

say no, and I think we're going to test that over time. In the coming months, the Supreme Court said no again, and Susan Page I think it's important not to conflate other decisions that the Supreme Court makes, whether it's overturning Roe, a half-century president, which was shocking. but it's really not surprising if you look at what these

judge

s had said since their law school days.

I think it's important for commentators not to conflate those ideological decisions with these constitutional questions related to the power of a president or the power of a former president and over and over again you say: again, whether you're talking about the Special Master, whether whether you're talking about tax returns, whether you're talking about privilege, whether you're talking about all these questions were what Donald Trump

thought

oh, they're my court because I appointed them um he's thinking they're going to fail your favor, not only do they not rule in your favor, but these decisions are unanimous, they are not signed and they sound, I

would

say, a resounding endorsement of some basic, uh, basic, fundamental rules of law, yes, yes.

I really see Joe affirming the rule of law in recent days and one of the things that I think is encouraging is that in several cases we have seen

judges

appointed by President Trump ruling against his interests and against his wishes in these cases. and thinking about the federal appeals court yesterday that indicated that it was going to annul that judge in Florida who created the special Master for the search of classified documents and other confidential documents in Mar-A-Lago, think about how besieged the president. Former President Trump is in many front seats Atlanta, Atlanta grand jury heard from Senator Lindsey Graham yesterday we saw in New York the court date set for the New York State Attorney General's fraud charges against the Trump organization set for next October.

You really see, sometimes the legal system takes a little time to figure things out and move forward and carry out the processes, but I have to say that the president, President Trump, it's been a very humbling couple of days for him. In terms of this whole web of legal challenges that he now faces and Willie should have seen as much of this coming. He

thought

the Supreme Court justices were going to be like Judge Cannon, who just took an absolute beating yesterday. in the 11th circuit again for those who don't follow it, the 11th circuit is one of the most conservative circuits in the United States, it's probably the entitled version of the 9th circuit on the west coast, but I know a lot of judges. a lot of people who have worked on the 11th circuit, I mean, yeah, they're ideologically conservative, it's not nonsense, it's all business and here you have the 11th circuit yesterday, uh, in this hearing and they make it very clear that they're going to do it. overturn what Judge Cannon did, which was absurd, uh, legal.

Legal scholars left, center and right were saying it was absurd, well, the 11th Circuit stepped in and maybe get rid of the Special Master, uh, because there's no room, uh, you. even when you go to Clarence Thomas, you go to Brett Kavanaugh, you go to Amy Coney Barrett if he thought he was going to get some special break in these decisions, he has been woefully wrong not only in these decisions, but let's say he said it again in the 55 or 65 cases that Trump's lawyers took to Federal Court to try to claim widespread voter fraud, got 65. This is a pretty compelling argument for this Supreme Court on these issues to be direct and call the shots. and Strikes and all of this gets to the wrong mentality of Donald Trump, which is that if I appointed you I have impunity under your command, I mean, I did you a favor, you do me a favor as if he were operating a business in New York in the 1980s and Hugo Lowell, if you look at this 11th Circuit decision, we're talking about a three-judge panel, to Joe's point, two of those three judges were appointed by Trump, so he thought that I was going to get a good result, right?

What are the implications of this? What does this circuit 11 failure practically mean now? Well, we don't have a ruling yet, but you know the indication that this is going to be bad for Trump because they basically said you know what the difference is between the documents. case and any other previous accusations of the defendant and the only thing that Trump's lawyers could also decide is that he is a former president and that is why he should receive special treatment and not even the 11th circuit yesterday seemed to buy that argument and it was a Actually, all three panels basically said you know there's no case where you should get special treatment and why should the judiciary, given the separation of powers, be able to interfere and stop an executive branch investigation and that was the kind of the fundamental issue at play and I think you know that's why everyone came out of that hearing thinking that Trump's Masters special basically wasn't canceled, yeah, you know, uh, you and I have known Donald Trump for a long time. a long time, um, I guess I'm not surprised that you think that if you name someone they're going to do you favors, uh, but that shows complete ignorance of the federal judiciary, complete absolute ignorance, and you continue to be surprised, you know, it continued surprising during his mandate. when the judges he appointed would rebuke him, rebuke his policies and this has happened over and over again and it seems like here, we're five years later, he still doesn't get it, no, no.