The Call To Declas, Smear Campaign Alert, United We Stand – Episode 2046

• China has agreed to a $40 billion agricultural purchase from the U.S.  In exchange for that purchase President Trump will be maintaining the full 25 percent tariffs on approximately $250 billion of Chinese imports and reducing to 7.5 percent the tariffs on approximately $120 billion of Chinese imports (round two).  [Those were 15% prior to reduction]
• The net difference (dropping 15% to 7.5%) is around $9 billion in tariff relief.  Additionally, the U.S. is “suspending” the December 15th tariffs pending compliance verification with the non-tariff issues and China pledges.
• Beijing has agreed to allow U.S. banks access to their financial markets, reform their behavior on IP theft, stop the forced transfer of technology and, according to their *promises*, allow exclusive ownership of U.S. businesses within China.  These are the non-tariff issues.  However, these are *promises* so far, Trump and the patriots know this. 
• For Now, Trump doesn’t necessarily want China to comply with Western perspectives on free, fair and reciprocal trade.  He doesn’t want it not to suck doing business in China.  The goal of decoupling the U.S. from China is easier if U.S. companies are abused by China.  In the bigger picture President Trump wants the U.S. companies to leave.
• The decoupling is already underway, and President Trump is creating new supply chains and manufacturing opportunities within the USMCA.   
•  President Trump gains a net $40 billion for U.S. farmers; and gives up $9 billion in tariffs.   

Source: theconservativetreehouse.com

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• As we expected the Supreme Court has granted the petition for a writ of certiorari and will hear cases related to attempts to gain President Trump financial records and tax filings.
• The Supreme Court has issued a stay upon all lower court action and consolidated the cases into one writ.  The court will hear arguments in March and release a ruling later in the summer of 2020.
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• The underlying House case has several defects.
• Attorney Ristvan previously provided a good encapsulation of the problems for the House that explains why President Trump could likely win the case:

House Oversight is one of three committees that 26USC§6103(f) requires the IRS to turn over individual returns “upon request”.

They requested (PDJT taxes for 6 years 2013-2018) long before Pelosi announced her impeachment inquiry, way before the House vote on same, to which Pelosi said Sunday, (paraphrased) “We haven’t decided to impeach. We are only inquiring about it.”

The ‘upon request’ is not as absolute as it seems. The request must still be predicated on a legitimate legislative purpose. SCOTUS has held (I skip the rulings, since previously commented on here many months ago) that there are only two valid purposes, both constrained to legislative powers expressly granted by A1§8.

1. An inquiry into making, repealing, or amending an A1§8 law.
2. Oversight of executive administration of an existing law.

With respect to (1), a legitimate legislative purpose would be reviewing real estate tax law for possible changes. BUT then, the request should have come from Ways and Means (Neal) where tax laws originate. AND, it should have included requests for tax returns from other big real estate developers also. Singling out only PDJT is a fatal defect to this purpose.

With respect to (2), after Nixon/Agnew the tax code was amended to require a special IRS audit of annual POTUS and VPOTUS returns, with the results held in the National Archive. Reviewing those special audits by IRS would be a proper Oversight and Reform legislative purpose, BUT ONLY for 2017-2018 after PDJT was inaugurated. The earlier 4 years demanded are a fatal defect to this purpose.

Both these valid points were raised by President Trump and were already on their way to SCOTUS. Now the committee is trying to ‘cure’ these fatal request defects by claiming the returns are necessary for impeachment. This raises four new issues where PDJT can also win.

1. Impeachment is not a legislative purpose within A1§8.
2. Articles of Impeachment have historically been the the province of Judiciary, NOT Oversight.
3. The demand was made BEFORE the impeachment inquiry unofficially started and cannot be retrospectively cured.
4. No tax ‘high crimes of misdemeanors’ have even been alleged. Impeachment fishing expeditions are unconstitutional.

  this case has the potential to set a major constitutional precedent about POTUS harassment via political impeachment.

• The original requests to declassify the Carter Page FISA application came in January 2018 as a result of the Nunes memo.   A classified and heavily redacted version of the application was released July 21st, 2018.  A month later, in August 2018, Congress again requested the Trump administration to declassify the document(s).
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• In March 2019, after the Special Counsel finished his investigation, a now minority in congress again formally asked President Trump (3rd time) to declassify the FISA application.
• On May 23rd, 2019, President Trump announced he was giving Attorney General Bill Barr the authority to declassify the FISA application, timed to support the IG investigation:

• Today, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), again asks President Trump to declassify the FISA application.  This is the fifth request from congress:

Source: theconservativetreehouse.com

3680 was a duplicate post