WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Monday closed lawsuits over whether Donald Trump illegally profited from his presidency, saying the cases are debatable now that Trump is no longer in office.
The high court’s action was the first in a steady stream of orders and decisions on pending lawsuits involving Trump, now that his presidency has ended. Some orders may result in case firings, as Trump is no longer president. In other cases, the procedures that were delayed because Trump was in the White House can be resumed and his pace even faster.
Judges rejected Trump’s challenge to lower court decisions allowing the prosecution to continue, alleging that he violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting payments from foreign and domestic employees staying at Trump International Hotel and sponsoring other companies owned by the Trump International Hotel. former president and his family.
The high court also ordered the rejection of the lower court’s decisions and ordered the appellate courts in New York and Richmond, Virginia, to dismiss the cases as debatable now that Trump is no longer in office.
The result leaves no appeals court opinion on the books in an area of law that has rarely been explored in the history of the United States.
The cases involved lawsuits filed by Maryland and the District of Columbia, and sophisticated restaurants and hotels in New York and Washington, DC, which “found themselves in the unenviable position of having to compete with companies owned by the President of the United States.”
The lawsuits sought financial records that showed how much state and foreign governments paid the Trump Organization to stay and eat on Trump’s properties.
The cases never reached a point where all records needed to be delivered. But Karl Racine and Brian Frosh, the attorneys general of Washington, DC and Maryland, respectively, said in a joint statement that a decision by a federal judge in Maryland that was against Trump “will serve as a precedent that will help prevent anyone else from use the presidency or other federal office to make personal financial gains the way President Trump has done for the past four years. ”
Other cases involving Trump remain in the Supreme Court or in lower courts.
Trump is trying to block the Manhattan district attorney executing a subpoena for his tax return, part of a criminal investigation against the president and his affairs. Lower courts are evaluating Congressional subpoenas for Trump’s financial records. And the judges also have before them Trump’s appeal of a decision that prohibits him from blocking critics on his Twitter account. Like the emoluments cases, Trump’s appeal appears to be debatable now that he’s out of office and also has his Twitter account suspended.
Republican senators and some jurists have said that Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate cannot proceed now that he is an ordinary citizen again. But many scholars have said that Trump’s return to private life poses no impediment to an impeachment trial.