Former president donald trump castigated on Wednesday at the Supreme Court – of which he appointed three justices – for unanimously rejecting his request to block a congressional committee from obtaining his federal tax returns.
Trump’s rant against the conservative-dominated court came a day after the Republican presidential hopeful of 2024 learned of the court’s decision and saw ominous signs in three other courts where he faces troublesome cases.
These other cases include two criminal investigations into Trump and a civil lawsuit that threatens his New York-based company. That company, the Trump Organization, is separately facing a criminal trial in Manhattan for an alleged tax avoidance scheme. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in all cases.
“Why would anyone be surprised that the Supreme Court ruled against me, they still do!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social account. “The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige and reputation, and is no more than a political body, our country paying the price.”
“Shame on them!” he wrote.
Trump also noted that the Supreme Court had previously declined to take cases seeking to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election in favor of the president. Joe Biden. Trump’s campaign has failed to prove voter fraud allegations in dozens of lawsuits across the country.
These denials and the court’s latest denials are a sore point for Trump, as he nominated Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They joined three other Tories on the nine-judge bench.
The court on Tuesday rejected Trump’s attempt to temporarily block the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining his tax returns from the IRS as part of an investigation into how the tax agency verifies the returns of sitting presidents. There was no dissent noted in the court order.
The victory of the Democratic-controlled committee, after three years of legal battlescomes weeks before the GOP takes majority control of the House in January.
This leaves open the question of what work, if any, the panel will do with the feedback by then, and whether a public report or action will be taken. before Republican lawmakers took control of the committee.
Although nothing emerges from the investigation, Trump faces a dizzying array of legal issues that are likely to continue to plague him as he seeks the presidency in 2024.
At a hearing on Tuesday, a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit appeared strongly inclined to rule in favor of the Justice Department’s request to overturn the decision of a federal judge appointed by Trump to appoint a watchdog to review documents seized from his Florida residence before prosecutors are allowed to use them in an investigation.
The DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation into Trump regarding his removal of White House records, a number of which have been classified. The FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach in August to seize the documents.
“Besides the fact that it’s a former president, everything else about it is indistinguishable from any pre-charge search warrant,” appeals court judge Bill Pryor said in court. closing arguments Tuesday in Atlanta.
“And we have to be concerned about the precedent we would be setting that would allow any target of a federal criminal investigation to go to a district court and have a district court hear that kind of motion, exercise jurisdiction fair and interferes with the executive’s ongoing investigation,” he said.
At another Atlanta courthouse on Tuesday, A Georgia state grand jury heard private testimony from Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. This 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.
On November 1, the Supreme Court denied Graham’s request to block a subpoena for his testimony, which was to focus on contact he had with state election officials as Trump tried to reverse his loss there.
Trump’s attorneys also appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday. Judge Arthur Engoron has set a trial date for October in a civil lawsuit in which New York Attorney General Letitia James accuses the ex-president, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization of widespread fraud involving years of false financial statements on the company of trumps.
Engoron and Trump’s attorney Alina Habba allegedly snapped at each other during that hearing over a number of issues, including what the judge suggested was she was mulling over previously failed arguments in a motion to dismiss the case.
“It seems to me that the facts are the same. The law is the same. The parties are the same. I don’t know why me and my staff, let alone the attorney general’s staff, have to start all over again,” Engoron said. said, according to CNN. “It’s like jumping through the same hoops.”
Trump has a habit, over decades of litigation, of dragging out legal proceedings.
Kevin Wallace, a lawyer with the New York Attorney General’s office, reportedly told Engoron on Tuesday, “It’s just their game of delay, delay, delay.”
“They’re trying to push this back until 2024,” he said.