Trump v. Vance

• Citation: 480 F.Supp.3d 460
• Decision Date: 20 August 2020
• Docket Number: 19 Civ. 8694 (VM)
• Parties: Donald J. TRUMP, Plaintiff, v. Cyrus R. VANCE, Jr., in his official capacity as District Attorney of the County of New York, and Mazars USA, LLP, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

480 F.Supp.3d 460

Donald J. TRUMP, Plaintiff,

v.Cyrus R. VANCE, Jr., in his official capacity as District Attorney of the County of New York, and Mazars USA, LLP, Defendants.

19 Civ. 8694 (VM)

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

Signed August 20, 2020

Alan Samuel Futerfas, Law Offices of Alan S. Futerfas, New York, NY, Marc Lee Mukasey, Mukasey Frenchman & Sklaroff, New York, NY, Patrick Strawbridge, Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC, Boston, MA, William Consovoy, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Arlington, VA, for Plaintiff.

Allen James Vickey, Solomon B. Shinerock, Carey R. Dunne, James Henry Graham, Julieta Veronica Lozano, Sarah W. Walsh, PRO HAC VICE, New York County District Attorney's Office, New York, NY, Caitlin Joan Halligan, David Coon, Ryan Wolfe Allison, Selendy & Gay PLLC, New York, NY, Christopher Conroy, District Attorney New York County, Major Economic Crimes Bureau, New York, NY, Walter Dellinger, Duke University Law School, Durham, NC, for Defendant Cyrus R. Vance.

Inbal Paz Garrity, Jerry D. Bernstein, Nicholas Robert Tambone, Blank Rome LLP, New York, NY, Peter Joseph Larkin, Thomas R. Manisero, Rebecca Rose Gelozin, Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker, L.L.P., White Plains, NY, for Defendant Mazars USA, LLP.

Joshua E. Gardner, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, Jeffrey Stuart Oestericher, U.S. Attorney's Office, SDNY, New York, NY, for Interested Party United States of America.

DECISION AND ORDER

VICTOR MARRERO, United States District Judge.

Plaintiff Donald J. Trump (the "President") filed this action seeking to enjoin enforcement of a grand jury subpoena (the "Mazars Subpoena") issued by Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., in his official capacity as the District Attorney of the County of New York (the "District Attorney"), to the accounting firm Mazars USA, LLP ("Mazars"). (See "Complaint," Dkt. No. 1; "Amended Complaint," Dkt. No. 27.) The President initially based his claim for injunctive relief on an allegedly absolute immunity from criminal process while in office, which this Court rejected by Decision and Order dated October 7, 2019. See Trump v. Vance, 395 F. Supp. 3d 283 (S.D.N.Y. 2019). On appeal, both the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the United States Supreme Court agreed that the President was not entitled to an injunction based on his assertions of a temporary absolute immunity from criminal process. See Trump v. Vance, 941 F.3d 631 (2d Cir. 2019) ; Trump v. Vance, ––– U.S. ––––, 140 S. Ct. 2412, 207 L.Ed.2d 907 (2020).

The case now returns to this Court on remand, pursuant to the Supreme Court's guidance that the President may challenge the validity of the Mazars Subpoena on specific grounds apart from the categorical immunity considered initially and on appeal. (See Dkt. Nos. 47, 54.) In accordance with the Supreme Court's Opinion, the President has filed a Second Amended Complaint claiming that the Mazars Subpoena is overbroad and issued in bad faith. (See Second Amended Complaint ("SAC"), Dkt. No. 57.) Now before the Court is the District Attorney's motion to dismiss the SAC for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) (" Rule 12(b)(6)"). (See "Motion," Dkt. No. 62.) For the reasons set forth below, the Court GRANTS the Motion and dismisses the SAC with prejudice.

INTRODUCTION

"NOTHING COULD BE DONE"

At the oral arguments held before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit late last year, the lawyers representing the President, in both his official and personal capacities, advocated the novel theory of absolute presidential immunity detailed below.¹ To summarize, the President brought the action in federal district court challenging the grand jury subpoena issued by the District Attorney, who was investigating potential violations of state law arising from private conduct involving individuals and entities associated with the President and covering a period of time predating his election. In that connection, the District Attorney sought certain financial records, including eight years of President Trump's tax returns. To this end, the District Attorney served a grand jury subpoena on the President's accounting firm demanding production of the documents.

The President's counsel claimed that a sitting President is absolutely immune from any form of judicial process in any criminal case, and that the President could thus refuse to comply with the subpoena by withholding the materials requested, as well as by directing the private accountant who had custody of the records not to produce them to the prosecutor. To stake out the limitless boundaries of the exemption they asserted, the President's attorneys gave the appellate judges an example aggressive in its breadth and telling by its extremity. They declared that under their theory of temporary absolute immunity, even if the President (presumably any president) while in office were to shoot a person in the middle of New York's Fifth Avenue, he or she would be shielded from law enforcement investigations and judicial proceedings of any kind, federal or state, until the expiration of the President's term. Short of that time lapse, they argued, "nothing could be done" by the authorities to prosecute the crime.² As this Court suggested in its earlier ruling in this litigation, that notion, applied as so robustly proclaimed by the President's advocates, is as unprecedented and far-reaching as it is perilous to the rule of law and other bedrock constitutional principles on which this country was founded and by which it continues to be governed.

TO BE SO BOLD

Various categorical "nothing-could-be-done" features of the temporary absolute immunity theory the President's counsel proclaimed in the previous proceedings in this litigation illustrate just how far the notion could stretch and work in practice, why it raises such ominous implications, and why the courts at the three levels of the federal judiciary that reviewed it unequivocally rejected the argument. Though not directly at issue here in relation to an assessment of the SAC, for contextual purposes a review of these contentions may be helpful. As depicted, temporary absolute immunity would encompass every phase of judicial process, whether conducted by federal or state prosecutors, effectively precluding any investigation, indictment, trial, and punishment of an incumbent President. Moreover, the bar would apply to actions arising from the President's discharge of official duties as well as to conduct relating to his or her private affairs. And the President could claim such immunity even if the underlying events entailed private behavior that occurred before he or she assumed office. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the purported immunity is that in essence it could be transmittable: If the President's potentially unlawful actions integrally entangled misdeeds by other persons, absolute immunity protection could be passed on to them so as to effectively forestall grand jury inquiry, at the President's will and behest, not only into the President's own behavior, but also potentially into offenses that may have been committed by third persons, such as presidential staff, relatives, or business associates, insofar as the suspected wrongdoing also touched upon the President or his or her property or effects. The concept of temporary absolute immunity would bear adverse consequences for the fair and effective administration of justice. Theoretically, if reelected, a President could be in office for eight years, perhaps longer in the case of a President who assumes office to fill a vacancy in the presidency. For a prosecutor to wait until then to obtain vital records necessary for an investigation of potential criminal conduct would risk that key witnesses would no longer be available and that their memories of the events would have significantly dimmed. In that event not only the President but also any private individual accomplices implicated in serious crimes could escape being brought to justice, while potentially innocent persons snared in the scandal may be unable to gain official exculpation.

At the core, the argument declares that a sitting President, as well as, derivatively, his or her staff, relatives, and business associates, current and former, stand above the law and beyond the reach of any judicial process in law enforcement proceedings pertaining to potentially criminal conduct and transactions involving an incumbent President. Such unlimited protection from judicial process presumably would apply no matter how egregious the presidential wrongdoing charged -- even a murder on Fifth Avenue, according to what the President's attorney told the appellate court in this case. Moreover, under such a categorical enlargement of presidential immunity, any inquiry concerning how substantially or minimally judicial process would actually bear on a President's discharge of his or her official duties, the running of statutes of limitations, or the involvement of accomplices and effects on them, would all be irrelevant as well.

Rulings by this Court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals repudiated the President's temporary absolute immunity theory.³ On further appeal, the United States Supreme Court similarly rejected the President's arguments, holding that "the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need."⁴

The Supreme Court's opinion in Trump v. Vance did not definitively settle the controversy over the constitutional scope and practical application of presidential immunity from judicial process. Historically, the case represents the latest of a long line of disputes implicating the underpinnings and dimensions of that doctrine. Moreover, the litigation entailed only one component of judicial proceedings, a state grand jury investigation that possibly could implicate various individuals and business entities,...