President Trump just won a major victory in court today, as federal appeals court judges threw out a case against him over the emoluments clause of the Constitution:
WAPO – A federal appeals court Wednesday sided with President Trump, dismissing a lawsuit claiming the president is illegally profiting from foreign and state government visitors at his luxury hotel in downtown Washington.
The unanimous ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is a victory for the president in a novel case brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia involving anti-corruption provisions in the emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
In its ruling, the three-judge panel said the attorneys general lacked legal standing to bring the lawsuit alleging the president is violating the Constitution when his business accepts payments from state and foreign governments. The decision — from Judges Paul V. Niemeyer, Dennis W. Shedd and A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. — also stops dozens of subpoenas to federal government agencies and Trump’s private business entities for financial records related to the D.C. hotel.
“The District and Maryland’s interest in enforcing the Emoluments Clauses is so attenuated and abstract that their prosecution of this case readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts, which were created to resolve real cases and controversies between the parties,” Niemeyer wrote in the 36-page opinion.
WAPO says the Democrat Attorney Generals have said they would “consider appealing for a rehearing by a full panel of the 4th Circuit”, so the case may not technically be over. We’ll have to wait and see if they get their rehearing or not.
But for now Trump has achieved a decisive victory and Jay Sekulow couldn’t be happier:
“The decision states that there was no legal standing to bring this lawsuit in the first place,” he said after the ruling. “This latest effort at Presidential harassment has been dismissed with prejudice.”
In case you are wondering, both Niemeyer and Shedd are George W. Bush appointees and Quattlebaum Jr. is a Trump appointee.