The president*'s lawyers—by which I mean his actual lawyers as well as the United States Department of Justice, and that's another story for another day entirely—took a little shopping trip through the federal judiciary recently and came away with a real bargain at an outlet store down in Richmond, Virginia. From The New York Times:

The three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., appeared much less sympathetic to the lawsuit than the federal district judge in Maryland who has overseen the case thus far. The suit, filed by the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland, alleges that Mr. Trump’s decision to retain ownership of the hotel after he took office violates the Constitution’s emoluments clauses.

During the hearing, Judge Dennis W. Shedd, the panel’s senior jurist, suggested the lawsuit seemed to seek to penalize the president for being a successful business executive. “You even want him fired from ‘The Apprentice,’ don’t you,” he said, apparently referring to reports that the president benefited from the purchase of rights for the show by government-owned foreign broadcasters.

The lawsuit, the first of its kind, asserts that Mr. Trump is violating the clauses in the Constitution that restrict federal officials from accepting government-bestowed financial gains or “emoluments,” other than their salaries. The Justice Department asked the appeals court to intervene after a series of rulings against the president by Judge Peter J. Messitte of the United States District Court in Greenbelt, Md.

That there is somebody on the federal bench who still believes the president* to be a successful business executive (and who takes The Apprentice seriously) is another issue we should ponder at length later.

President Trump leaves the Trump International Hotel in D.C. after having dinner there, a nice little advertisement for the company from which he did not actually divest. Pool Getty Images

The fact is that the president* is well more than half-a-crook, and he's surrounded himself with people who are just like him, and, therefore, there is no reason to believe that he hasn't been monetizing his office in ways that violate his oath. This is a guy who stiffs gardeners. Does anybody seriously believe he isn't profiting as president* through his hotel? He'd turn the East Room into a Keno parlor if he thought he could get away with it.

The attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia have asserted that the Trump hotel is unfairly siphoning off business and damaging competitors in their jurisdictions. Judge Messitte ruled that they had enough legal standing for the suit to go forward. But Hashim M. Mooppan, a deputy assistant attorney general representing the federal government, told the appeals court judges that the president was immune from such claims. “This case should be over,” he said. “The president is unique.” He added: “He is not any old inferior officer like the postmaster general. They can’t point to any basis in either case law or history to subject the president of the United States” to such demands.

The panic, of course, rose because the district court allowed the suit to proceed and the discovery process to begin, which is something the president* wants to avoid like paying his bills. Somewhere, out there, is a citizen with a dollar the president* doesn't own. He will run that person to ground if he has to crash the country to do it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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