An article in Newsweek by Emily Zogbi at https://bit.ly/2MppR5G, entitled “Trump And Money: The Court Case That Could Blow His Finances Open,” reports that the Justice Department is resisting discovery requests by the plaintiffs (the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia) in a case claiming that Donald Trump’s continued business connection to the Trump International Hotel in Washington is resulting in violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

The Emoluments Clause says, in pertinent part:

“…no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

An “emolument” has been broadly defined by the judge in the case as “any profit, gain or advantage of more than de minimis value, received directly or indirectly.” https://bit.ly/2BoIJwi

This approach, consistent with the historical roots of the Emoluments Clause, raises the issue whether Trump is benefiting financially from foreign firms and officials who choose now to stay in his hotel when visiting Washington.

The dispute over discovery relates to Donald Trump’s financial records and, since discovery is normally broadly permitted if it is likely to produce or lead to the production of admissible evidence regarding the matters at issue, there is likely panic in the Trump legal team and the White House. What Trump and his lawyers are most afraid of is that the document discovery will compel the release of his tax returns that he promised repeatedly he would disclose, then recanted, along with most other transparency commitments.

Now, here’s the laugher: the cited article notes that “the Justice Department objects to any “discovery” on a sitting president.” because “any discovery would necessarily be a distraction to the President’s performance of his constitutional duties.”

This “distraction” argument might have some force in some case (it didn’t concern the Republicans during the Clinton impeachment proceedings), but it’s a pathetic joke when applied to Donald Trump. It is undisputed that the president spends hours a day watching Fox News and similar right-wing propaganda sources, not to mention his Twitter habit, whereby he tweets constantly when events don’t go as he likes. That is virtually every day – in the past 24 hours, it appears he has issued at least 17 tweets, attacking people and newspapers, proclaiming his innocence of crimes and more. And, of course, there is his golf habit. As of March 2018, Trump spent almost 25 percent of his time at one of his golf courses. https://cnn.it/2FPWwL4 He reportedly refuses to read briefing books, or any books actually.

The argument that divulging his financial records, which Trump himself almost certainly never personally touches, is preposterous in light of Trump’s daily habits. The small amount of time required for Trump to participate in the document discovery process can be deducted from his daily TV, ranting and golf time without interfering one bit with the performance of his real responsibilities as chief executive of the United States.

By the way, this situation does not fit into the phony narrative spewed by Rudy Giuliani today on a TV interview in which he said, “truth isn’t truth.” His cited proof was a conflict of statements between Trump and James Comey. Giuliani’s argument is ludicrous for multiple reasons. Two of them are: (1) the President is lying and Comey is not; therefore, there is truth in what Comey said, regardless of Trump’s denials; (2) if there is no truth, then Trump’s declarations of innocence are all false and he is guilty of, among other things, obstruction of justice, collusion with a foreign power to interfere with a national election, violations of federal election laws and treason.

Manifestly, a conflict about whether an event happened or a statement was made does not mean there is no truth. It means there is a conflict that must be resolved and one of the ways we do that in litigation is through discovery. The gang of autocrats and enablers in the White House can’t have it both ways just because a lawyer says “yes is no” and “up is down.” That may have worked in the Humpty Dumpty tale, but not in real life. If Giuliani’s position that all statements about facts are equally true, even if in direct and irreconcilable conflict, he has walked his client into yet another legal dead-end.