Former President Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday on the Supreme Court — three of whose justices he appointed — for unanimously rejecting his request to dam a congressional committee from obtaining his federal income tax returns.
Trump’s rant against the conservative-dominated court got here a day after the 2024 Republican presidential hopeful learned of the court’s move, and saw ominous signs at three other courts where he faces troublesome cases.
Those other cases include two criminal investigations of Trump and a civil lawsuit that threatens his Latest York City-based company. That firm, the Trump Organization, individually is on criminal trial in Manhattan for an alleged tax-avoidance scheme. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the entire cases.
“Why would anybody be surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, they all the time do!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social account. “The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, & has change into nothing greater than a political body, with our Country paying the worth.”
“Shame on them!” he wrote.
Trump also noted that the Supreme Court previously had refused to take cases that sought to reverse his 2020 presidential election loss to President Joe Biden. Trump’s campaign did not prove election fraud claims in dozens of lawsuits across the country.
Those and the most recent refusals by the court are a sore point for Trump, as he appointed the Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They joined three other conservatives on the nine-justice bench.
The court on Tuesday rejected Trump’s bid to temporarily block the House Ways and Means Committee from getting his tax returns from the IRS as a part of a probe of how the tax agency audits the returns of sitting presidents. There have been no noted dissents within the court’s order.
The Democratic-controlled committee’s victory, after three years of legal battles, comes weeks before the GOP is about to take majority control of the House in January.
That leaves open the query of what, if any, work the panel will do with the returns before then, and whether any public report or motion will likely be taken before Republican lawmakers take control of the committee.
Even when nothing comes of the probe, Trump faces a head-spinning array of legal problems which might be set to proceed plaguing him as he seeks the presidency in 2024.
At a hearing Tuesday, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the eleventh Circuit appeared strongly inclined to rule in favor of the Department of Justice’s request to overturn a Trump-appointed federal judge’s decision to appoint a watchdog to review documents seized from his Florida residence before prosecutors could be allowed to make use of them for a probe.
The DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation of Trump over his removal of records from the White House, various which were classified. The FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, in August to seize those documents.
“Aside from the undeniable fact that this involves a former president, every thing else about that is indistinguishable from any pre-indictment search warrant,” said appeals court Judge Bill Pryor during Tuesday’s oral arguments in Atlanta.
“And we have got to be concerned in regards to the precedent that we’d create that may allow any goal of a federal criminal investigation to go right into a district court and to have a district court entertain this sort of petition, exercise equitable jurisdiction and interfere with the manager branch’s ongoing investigation,” he said.
In one other Atlanta courthouse on Tuesday, a Georgia state grand jury heard testimony in private from Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. That grand jury is collecting evidence for a criminal investigation into whether Trump and his allies interfered in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, which Biden won.
The Supreme Court on Nov. 1 rejected Graham’s request to dam a subpoena for his testimony, which was expected to give attention to contacts he had with state election officials as Trump tried to reverse his loss there.
Trump’s lawyers also appeared Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court. Judge Arthur Engoron set a trial date for October in a civil lawsuit during which Latest York Attorney General Letitia James accuses the ex-president, three of his adult children, and the Trump Organization of widespread fraud involving years’ value of false financial statements about company assets.
Engoron and Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, reportedly snapped at one another during that hearing over various issues, including what the judge has suggested was her rehashing already-failed arguments in a motion to toss out the case.
“It seems to me the facts are the identical. The law is similar. The parties are the identical. I do not know why I and my staff not to say the attorney general staff have to undergo this all again,” Engoron said, in line with CNN. “It’s like jumping through the identical hoops.”
Trump has a pattern in a long time of litigation of dragging out legal proceedings.
Kevin Wallace, a lawyer for the Latest York attorney general’s office, reportedly told Engoron on Tuesday, “That is all just their game of delay, delay, delay.”
“They’re attempting to push this into 2024,” he said.
