“Morning Joe” spent time Wednesday discussing the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to deny Trump’s last-ditch plea to stop Democrats from accessing his tax documents — something the former president has been fighting for years, despite the fact that he said he would release his tax returns if he won the 2016 election.
However, the Court – which includes the three judges he appointed during his presidency, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – didn’t cater to him in this case. As a result, the House Committee of Ways and Means can attempt to access Trump’s tax documents before Republicans take the House majority in January.
“It’s important that commentators don’t conflate [the Supreme Court’s] ideological decisions with these constitutional questions regarding a former president’s power, whether you’re talking about the special master, tax returns, privilege — all of these questions where Donald Trump is thinking, ‘They’re my court because I appointed them,’ he’s thinking they’re going to rule in his favor,” host Joe Scarborough said.
He added: “Not only did they not rule in his favor, but these decisions are unanimous, they’re unsigned and they’re a ringing endorsement of some basic fundamental rules of law.”
Scarborough continued to reason that the Court’s decision likely sobered Trump, amid the web of legal challenges he’s facing, including the Georgia election probe and the case surrounding his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“He should’ve seen this coming,” Scarborough said. “He thought the judges on the Supreme Court would be like Judge Cannon, who just yesterday took an absolute dropping in the 11th Circuit.”
Despite, the 11th Circuit being one of the most conservative circuits in America, they made it clear that they would overturn Cannon’s ruling, which delayed a criminal investigation into classified documents seized from Trump’s Florida estate.
“If [Trump] thought he was going to get any special breaks on these rulings, he’s been sadly mistaken,” Scarborough said. “Not only these rulings, but the 65 cases that Trump attorneys brought to federal court to assert widespread voter fraud, he went 0 for 65. This is quite a compelling argument about this Supreme Court on these issues being straightforward and calling balls and strikes.”
Watch the full segment in the video above.
