The trial court in its 75-page opinion ruled that the abstention doctrine does apply and dismissed the president’s lawsuit.  But realizing that if a court of appeals said federal courts should get involved, Judge Victor Marrero laid out an alternative result, so that the question of whether Trump is entitled to a temporary injunction could be addressed as part of one appeal.  A temporary injunction is a court order blocking specific activity while a case is pending; it is called a preliminary injunction in federal court.  As part of the final order and judgment ending a case, a permanent injunction can be ordered that extends into the future after the case is over.

On 1 August 2019, the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr. — technically known as the DA of New York County — served a grand jury subpoena on the Trump Organization, which is wholly owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, of which Trump is the grantor (creator) of the trust, and its beneficiary.  The subpoena asked for documents about alleged hush money payments to two women.  This likely refers to Karen McDougal, whom Trump met in 2006 at the Playboy Magazine mansion, and Stephanie Clifford, alias Stormy Daniels, a pornographic movie performer whom Trump came in contact with in 2006, a somewhat busy year for him, it seems.  At first, the Trump Organization cooperated and produced documents, but after becoming aware that the DA also wanted tax returns, it “resisted that interpretation” (court of appeals opinion, pages 4-5).

So then, on 29 August 2019, the DA served a grand jury subpoena on Mazars USA, LLP, an accounting firm which has some of Trump’s financial and tax records.  The document request is reproduced in footnote 5 on pages 6-7, and covers the period from 1 January 2011 to the present.

On 19 September 2019, Trump filed the lawsuit against the District Attorney and the Mazars accounting firm, to try to get a court order (an injunction) blocking and preventing them from acting on, using documents from, or enforcing the subpoena.  The opinion notes that the accounting firm is trying to stay out of the line of fire, saying:  “Mazars itself takes no position on the legal issues raised in this appeal”.

The current baseline about the abstention doctrine comes from a 1971 Supreme Court opinion called Younger vs. Harris [1].  The court of appeals explained that–

“Under Younger and its progeny, however, federal courts must decline to exercise jurisdiction in three such exceptional categories of cases: “First, Younger preclude[s] federal intrusion into ongoing state criminal prosecutions. Second, certain civil enforcement proceedings warrant[] abstention. Finally, federal courts [must] refrain[] from interfering with pending civil proceedings involving certain orders uniquely in furtherance of the state courts’ ability to perform their judicial functions”.

The court of appeals decided that federal courts would not abstain in this situation–

“Because Younger’s policy of comity cannot be vindicated in light of the state‐federal clash before us, and because the President raises novel and serious claims that are more appropriately adjudicated in federal court, we conclude that abstention does not extend to the circumstances of this case”.

However, the court of appeals agreed with the trial court that a subpoena to the Mazars accountants requesting documents was valid, it could be enforced in this instance, and Trump was not entitled to a court injunction against it.  The discussion rests on three fascinating American historical events:  the treason trial of Aaron Burr in 1807, the subpoena to president Richard Nixon in the midst of the Watergate criminal prosecutions in 1974, and the civil lawsuit by Paula Jones against president Bill Clinton for his sexual misconduct toward her, resulting in a Supreme Court opinion in 1997.

Supreme Court Chief Judge John Marshall presided over the federal criminal trial in Virginia of Aaron Burr for treason, and he issued a subpoena on behalf of the defendant Burr to president Thomas Jefferson to produce documents, but apparently Jefferson never did produce them.  But the fact that a judicial decision was made to authorize a subpoena to a sitting president provided a precedent.

In the midst of the political turmoil around president Richard Nixon during the criminal prosecutions emerging from the Watergate burglary, and the impeachment investigation, a subpoena was served on him to “produce certain tape recordings and documents relating to his conversations with aides and advisers”, to the federal district court with a deadline of about three months before a criminal trial was set to start. The subpoena “required the production, in advance of the September 9 trial date, of certain tapes, memoranda, papers, transcripts, or other writings relating to certain precisely identified meetings between the President and others” [2].  Nixon was like the Mazars accountants are here — a third party with information and records for a proceeding not directly involving him, although Nixon was identified in the criminal charges against the others as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Paula Corbin Jones was an Arkansas state employee when Bill Clinton was governor.  She filed a civil lawsuit against Clinton when he was president and alleged, in part, that when he was governor, “… Ferguson persuaded her to leave her desk and to visit the Governor in a business suite at the hotel, where he made ‘abhorrent’ sexual advances that she vehemently rejected. She further claims that her superiors at work subsequently dealt with her in a hostile and rude manner, and changed her duties to punish her for rejecting those advances” [3].  The case was appealed right after it started, and the issue was whether the trial would be delayed until after Clinton left office, as the trial judge had ordered.  The U.S. Supreme Court reversed that order, and directed that the civil trial could proceed in the normal course.

Using the reasoning and rulings from those prior cases, the court of appeals in this matter involving Trump reached a narrow decision–

“… we conclude only that presidential immunity does not bar the enforcement of a state grand jury subpoena directing a third party to produce non-privileged material, even when the subject matter under investigation pertains to the President”.

Back during the investigation of the Trump 2016 campaign by “special counsel” Robert Mueller, some members of the mass media and others quivered with excitement that Trump might be indicted by the Mueller group, until two long-standing opinion memos of the Justice Department from 1973 and 2000 percolated up, disclosing that it had a “policy” — which is not an existing legal doctrine — that it would not charge a sitting president with a federal crime while in office.  These memos were used by Trump’s lawyers to argue that the subpoena should not be enforced, but the court of appeals noted that those memos talked about whether a sitting president could be charged with a crime, which is not the question here.  Pointing out that the Department of Justice does not decide what the law is, the court in an amusing footnote said, “The President appropriately does not argue that we owe any deference to the OLC memoranda, for ‘[t]he federal Judiciary does not … owe deference to the Executive Branch’s interpretation of the Constitution’ ” [4].

The court again made it clear on page 33 that the ruling does not address other obvious matters–

“We emphasize again the narrowness of the issue before us.  This appeal does not require us to consider whether the President is immune from indictment and prosecution while in office, nor to consider whether the President may lawfully be ordered to produce documents for use in a state criminal proceeding.  We accordingly do not address those issues”.

The court of appeals’ opinion is pretty easy to read and is here–

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/trumptaxes_2nd_cir_ny_da.pdf

After the opinion was handed down, the lawyers for the parties agreed that Trump would file a request with the U.S. Supreme Court, called a writ of certiorari, by 14 November to see if it will hear and decide the case–

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/trumptaxes_agree_apply_supcourt.pdf

A paper on the Aaron Burr treason trial from the Federal Judicial Center, and the Supreme Court opinions in United States vs. Nixon and Clinton vs. Jones can be viewed and downloaded for reading–

The Aaron Burr Treason Trial, 66 pages.

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/aaron_burr_treason_trial.pdf

United States vs. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), 34 pages.

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/us_v_nixon_418_us_683.pdf

Clinton vs. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997), 44 pages.

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/clinton_v_jones_520_us_681.pdf

I think that the Supreme Court will be best served by refusing to hear the case in this instance. The ruling of the court of appeals is very limited in scope.  It does not extend or stretch or even match the decision in the Nixon case about a subpoena, but instead is within it.  The trial court’s opinion emphasized that the district attorney stated, “… both his office and the grand jury are obligated to maintain confidential any documents produced in response to the Mazars subpoena” [5].  If the Supreme Court lets itself get involved in quibbling over a grand jury subpoena in an investigation that has nothing to do with the president’s conduct while in office or about a function of his office, then every little thing in the DA’s investigation will likely be yanked into federal court by Trump or another person being investigated on theories of evidentiary privilege and immunity stretched out beyond recognition.  The trial court in the federal Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals are on the same page and have set forth practical parameters.  If the DA proceeds to a criminal indictment, or a state court order or subpoena is directed at Trump personally while he is president, then perhaps it may be time to address those issues.

What is highly unlikely but would really kick up sand is if the Supreme Court reached down to review the abstention doctrine in this situation, with the possibility that it would say it is not yet time for the federal courts to get involved, and order the lawsuit dismissed, as the trial court did, until the DA makes a major move at Trump personally while he is president.

[1]  Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971).

[2]  Page 688, United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).

[3]  Page 685, Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997).

[4]  Footnote 16, page 29, court of appeals opinion.

[5]  Donald J. Trump v. Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., in his official capacity as District Attorney of the County of New York, and Mazars USA, LLP, No. 19 Civ. 8694, slip op. at 38-39 (S.D.N.Y. October 7, 2019).

Author: Robert Willmann

Originally published on Sic Semper Tyrannis. Republished by permission. Link to the original article.

Picture: President Donald J. Trump walks with U.S. Air Force Col. Rebecca J. Sonkiss on his arrival to Joint Base Andrews, Md. Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019, to board Air Force One for his trip to Bossier City, La. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour). Public domain.