Cartoon by Marian Kamensky

True To Form, Deutsche Bank Loses For Winning In Trump Supreme Court Rulings

Dealbreaker: The Supreme Court rulings that the President of the United States is not, as Donald Trump hoped against both precedent and decency, an absolute divine-right monarch during his tenure in the Oval Office, is a bit of a mixed bag. To be sure, his claims of absolute immunity from anything were junked not only by the 7-2 majority ruling in favor of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s subpoena of Trump’s accounting firm but also by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in dissent. But they mean, at worst, that a few dozen people in the fourth most-Democratic county in America will get to see his tax returns. And given that the high court has allowed Trump to continue litigating even that in the lower courts, it will almost certainly not be before November’s election. And if Congress is to ever get the financial records it desires, it, too, will have to wait until next year at the earliest, by which time they’ll hopefully have a good deal less reason to want them.

The twin rulings are also a mixed bag for Trump’s most loyal moneymen, Deutsche Bank. As it was Congress which subpoenaed the Germans, rather than the Manhattan D.A., they are off the hook, as it were, for the time being from providing evidence that could (but probably wouldn’t) destroy the president but which might also, if made public, destroy it (much more likely). Certainly, there was much relief in the bank’s statement that it “has demonstrated full respect for the U.S. legal process” and “will of course abide by a final decision by the courts,” whensoever that should come and if there is, in fact, still a Deutsche Bank to abide but such a decision in the late 2040s or whenever >>>