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By Matthew Russell Lee, thread, Patreon here

SDNY COURTHOUSE, August 23 – While lawyers for President Donald J. Trump and Congress argued 11 stories above, on August 23 Salvatore Arena pleaded guilty to three of four counts in a tax and accounting office scheme before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Katharine Polk Failla.

  The government did not require a guilty plea to Count Four, aggravated identity theft. And from a comment by his lawyer Robert J. Feldman at the end of the proceeding, thanking Jarrod L. Schaeffer and mentioning his client's cooperation, it sounded like a 5K letter may be in the works.

 In his allocution Arena said he mind was taken over by a woman, his boss. Has he cooperated against her? Watch this site.

 Lawyers for Deutsche Bank and Capital One resisted saying whether or not they have Donald J. Trump's tax returned while repeatedly questioned by Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Jon O. Newman and Peter W. Hall on August 23.

Deutsche Bank's lawyer tried to evade by saying he'd be happy to have that conversation with the judges not in open court. Judge Newman asked, Where would that be? After the Deutsche Bank lawyer said he would only "explore" whether to answer, and Capital One's lawyer said he took the same position, Judge Hall directed the two banks to file a letter in 48 hours with the answer. It will be under seal.

  Earlier in the oral argument on Trump's appeal of Judge Edgardo Ramos' denial of a preliminary injuction against the House Financial Services Committee's subpoenas to the banks, Trump's lawyer Patrick Strawbridge said the purpose of the subpoenas is to distract the President.

  House General Counsel Douglas Letter cites as precedent Richard Nixon voluntarily giving Congress some of his tax returns, and Bill and Hillary Clinton's Whitewater development information going to Congress, albeit to a special Whitewater Committee.

  Judge Debra Ann Livingston inquired about the Intelligence Committee subpoenas. While that Committee might not make whatever documents it gets public, Letter made it clear that the Financial Services Committee probably would make the documents public. Watch this site. More on Patreon here.

Back on Mah 22 while the lawyers on Donald Trump's bid for a preliminary injunction after two House of Representatives committees' subpoenas argued and failed before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Edgardo Ramos, sitting silent to the side of the courtroom were the lawyers for the two banks that got the subpoenas: Deutsche Bank and Capital One.

 Judge Ramos asked the two banks' four lawyers if they wanted to speak. They did not. This even as House counsel Patrick Strawbridge detailed Deutsche Bank's long history with money laundering (and theft during the Holocaust, which didn't come up). Capital One is a rough, too, on predatory auto lending and the Community Reinvestment Act. But the banks lay low.

  Now under Judge Ramos' 25-page ruling, which he read out over the course of 40 minutes in his courtroom 618 at 40 Foley Square, the banks become required to respond to the subpoenas in seven days, on May 29. That's the time during which the House has agreed not to enforce the subpoena, and the time during which Trump's lawyers seem certain to file an appeal and ask again for a stay from the Second Circuit Count of Appeals higher up, in both senses, in 40 Foley Square.

 After Judge Ramos' ruling Inner City Press sought left the cramped jury box and found itself in the elevator with Patrick Strawbridge and his colleagues. They quickly got off, but not uncivilly when compared, for example, to a recent organized crime scion leaving the SDNY Magistrates Court on the fifth floor of 500 Pearl Street.

  Later still on the steps outside the courthouse, Inner City Press asked Strawbridge how fast he would appeal. It's hard to say with these things, he replied. But an appeal seemed certain.

  During the proceeding, three protesters stood up holding signs like "Congress Has A Right To Know." This happened in the Second Circuit on August 23 as well. More on Patreon here.

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