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  1. #1
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    Default The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    I venture in law every now and then.. Okay, I venture a lot into law. I have read the Complaint against Trump. To Sum it up because Trump has a lot of businesses he will be in violation of the Constitution. Okay. This is absolutely right. There are two problems however. One is Standing.
    CREW's argument is that because it must divert its resources to Trump now that he is president they are harmed. Hmmm. Look, I am a huge ANTI-TRUMP citizen. However, this is a very stretched argument. Standing is not so paper thin. Even in Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 379 (1982) the Tester did not establish Standing. While the 4th Circuit argued what would create standing, it did not establish the major precepts for standing to sue in the context of a President.
    The fact is that this complaint argues the tenuous position that by diversion of resources they have standing. This is a moot argument. First, bad government and disagreement on assets does not give a private person the right to sue the Government or its individuals. Yes, its unfair and perhaps even in violation of the Constitution. However, if a Judge were to allow the lawsuit to proceed it would present various issues for national security that would be cumbersome, if not completely outside the realm for the Judicial Branch of Government.
    What CREW needs is to have a hotel in Washington, New York, or any other State where Trump has businesses to argue that because Trump has not divested and has presumably used his position of Presidential Power to entice an unfair advantage over say the Hilton Hotels, etc that they are seeking injunctive relief. Even then this would be a very paper thin argument.
    The fact is even if technically Trump is in violation of such provision, there is no exact or even mentioned remedy. Congress presumably could move to impeach, but the impeachment of the President does not exactly stretch this far for such reasons. First, the President has not committed a crime by simply owning a business or receiving money. A crime and violation would only be if he indeed accepted a bribe.
    In simplicity of argument, the President receives a salary from the American people. This salary is received from tax payers. Which are individuals. While it is a set fee for civic duty. The money itself is essentially backed by foreign entities such as the FED which have foreign influence. This is obviously an extreme argument, but none the less CREWS position is vituperative in its simple, yet constrained reasoning.
    It is obvious by reading the Complaint that its true Motive is essentially to discover Donald Trumps taxes. To what end? Even if the Group were to discover such taxes, there would be protective orders on any such release.
    The fact is this lawsuit has run a muck of its intentions. While the Defendant has stated this lawsuit is "without merit", its partly right. However, it would seem CREW is more arguing the definition rather than the substance.
    It is Congress who ultimately has control of this issue, not private individuals and not the Judiciary. Congress could convene a committee to investigate the Presidents emoluments. Congress could take action against the President if there is violations. Congress could also simply grant permission. The fact is Congress represents the will and the desire of the people, not the Judiciary. The Judiciary only enforces the laws of the Constitution. In this case, the enforcement mechanism is simply for Congress to act.

  2. #2
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    I'm going to decline to say much on this subject since (1) one of the attorneys bringing the suit works for my employer and (2) my husband is by profession a Democratic political analyst and adjunct professor teaching, among other things, American government. I'm biased in favor of the suit and I know I'm biased.

    But I will say that we are dealing with an unprecedented situation that I doubt the framers of the Constitution ever considered. When you have that kind of a situation, sometimes you have to think outside the box.

  3. #3
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    There's more the the CREW lawsuit than just the hotels. It also includes office lease and his TV show. Further, it's not the case they have to have had a hotel or similar economic activity to Trump's to have standing. A pretty good explanation of this is in Ragin v Harry Macklowe Real Estate. Provided they CAN fully demonstrate that the illegal activity (if proven) did divert resources, they will have standing. Of course, you can expect that contention is going to be strongly contested by Trump's defense. In Ragin, the court finds that they haven't been shown that the violation caused them to do something they wouldn't have been doing anyhow. In the Trump case, I'm not sure that's the case. Presumably CREW doesn't go around looking at politician's violations to the emoluants clause as part of the normal mission.

    Quote Quoting cbg
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    But I will say that we are dealing with an unprecedented situation that I doubt the framers of the Constitution ever considered.
    I believe they most certainly DID consider it, or else they wouldn't have included it in the document. Alexander Hamilton expressed it this way:

    "One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption."



    In fact, it is a concern all the time. It's just that for the first time we have a president who most likely is receiving such who refuses to "open the books" on it.

    I can tell you from the time I spent as an employee of the executive branch, once you get to a certain point in authority (In 1987, I put my signature to a CRAY 2 procurement $25MM in those dollars, aproximately $52MM today), they do indeed look at your finances. I had to complete a disclosure and check of my holdings (which wasn't much as a 26 year old computer geek) looking for both foreign involvement and conflicts with the potential suppliers to the government. This regularly comes up at the appointee level.

  4. #4
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    So, if the plaintiffs don't have standing, just who would? It's a violation of the constitution so any and all citizens should have standing as it harms every one of us. The injury is not a loss of income due to competition or anything else. It is simply a violation of the supreme law of the land of which "the people" should have standing to bring suit. We, the people (hey, that sounds like a good opening line for something) are injured because our leadership has been or could be paid off to act in a manner not in the best interest of our country (us).

  5. #5
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    Sorry, Ron. You're right, of course. But I still maintain that it's unlikely the Founding Fathers ever realized what a superpower our then-very-young nation would hold, and the magnitude of our global reach.

    Not that it really matters in the long run if they did or not...

  6. #6
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    Quote Quoting jk
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    So, if the plaintiffs don't have standing, just who would? It's a violation of the constitution so any and all citizens should have standing as it harms every one of us.
    That is not good enough to have standing. In order to maintain a suit in federal court, you must be able to show an actual injury specific to you, not just some generalized harm to the general public. In some circumstances there simply isn't going to be individual standing to sue over some government action that a person may feel violates the Constitution. The remedy there is the political process, not the courts.

    I am not going to weigh in on the specifics of this particular lawsuit as the political passions surrounding it will likely mean this thread will soon devolve into rounds of little more than partisan bickering, and I want no part of that.

  7. #7
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    TM is correct. For example, a black person can't sue just because someone discriminates towards blacks, for example, unless he can show specific damage to himself.

    The case for standing is laid out in the lawsuit which you can find here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/storage.citi...-DJT-Final.pdf

    The standing issue is specifically addressed in the filing above and as indicated in the first message of this thread and the cases mentioned in that post and in mine, it is the case in that organizations that work to address civil rights do have standing when someone's abuse of the Constitution forces them to exert effort they wouldn't otherwise be inclined to do. Of course, the key, as I mentioned is proving that.

  8. #8
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    Quote Quoting Taxing Matters
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    That is not good enough to have standing. In order to maintain a suit in federal court, you must be able to show an actual injury specific to you, not just some generalized harm to the general public. In some circumstances there simply isn't going to be individual standing to sue over some government action that a person may feel violates the Constitution. The remedy there is the political process, not the courts.

    I am not going to weigh in on the specifics of this particular lawsuit as the political passions surrounding it will likely mean this thread will soon devolve into rounds of little more than partisan bickering, and I want no part of that.
    If that is the case then I cannot imagine a scenario where anybody would ever have standing. Who is specifically harmed by the pres etc. accepting monetary favors? To me it's a law that there is no discernible injured party other than society in whole.

    Can you suggest an example of where you would have such an injured party?

  9. #9
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    Quote Quoting jk
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    Can you suggest an example of where you would have such an injured party?
    Again, leaving aside the specifics of the CREW lawsuit, suppose that Allied Aircraft LLC (AA) bribes a federal contracting official in the Defense Department to assure that its new bomber wins an Air Force contract. Better Bombers Inc (BB) had a competing bomber bid up for the same contract and lost. BB contends that it would have won the contract but for the bribe AA paid the contracting official. It would thus have standing to sue because it suffered a specific injury as a result of AA’s bribe. But you or I would not have have standing to sue over AA’s bribe alleging that taxpayers have been harmed by granting a contract that presumably was not the best option and thus cost the government more than it should because there is no harm specific to us from that bribe.

    As I said before, there are some claims of illegal action by the government for which no one will have standing to sue because no one is suffering a specific harm from the action. There is no principle in our law that says that citizens ought to have a remedy in court for every wrong done by government. Much of what government does is not reviewable by a court. Those are matters that must be addressed, if at all, in the political arena. And that is how it ought to be, frankly, as I would not want the courts to be the ultimate arbiter of government policy. We are not a nation of the courts, by the courts, and for the courts but rather a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. We hash most of these issues out in elections.

  10. #10
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    Default Re: The Trump Lawsuit by Crew. What Are Your Thoughts

    And hash you guys did. (Sorry couldn't stop myself, I don't mean anyone here, I mean all those people who voted for Trump, who voted for Johnson, who voted for whatsername - Green lady - and the whopping 47.3% of people who couldn't be bothered to vote at all - those people made a real hash of things.)

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