Supreme Court blocks House committee from immediately reviewing Trump’s financial records
Supreme Court blocks subpoena for Trump financial records
The ruling blocks a House subpoena directing Trump’s accounting firm to turn over financial documents, giving the president a temporary legal victory.
The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a House committee from immediately reviewing President Trump’s financial records, after the president’s lawyers agreed to an expedited review of a lower-court ruling granting access.
The court’s action signals that, even as Congress considers impeaching Trump, the court will undertake a more complete consideration of the legal powers of Congress and state prosecutors to investigate the president while he is in office.
The court instructed Trump’s lawyers to file a petition by Dec. 5 stating why the court should accept the case for full briefing and oral argument. If the petition is eventually denied, the lower-court ruling will go into effect. If accepted, the case probably will be heard this term, with a decision before the court adjourns at the end of June.
Lower courts have also sided with a New York district attorney seeking access to much of the same financial information for a grand jury investigation. The New York decision already was on hold, and did not require immediate Supreme Court action.
“This is a significant separation-of-powers clash between the president and Congress,” Trump’s personal lawyer William S. Consovoy said in a filing with the court in the case involving the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
He said Trump is “prepared to proceed on any schedule that the court deems appropriate.”
The House on Thursday told the Supreme Court that review was not necessary. It said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision saying the House committee was entitled to the information is straightforward and based upon Supreme Court precedent.
“The committee is investigating whether senior government officials, including the president, are acting in the country’s best interest and not in their own financial interest, whether federal agencies are operating free from financial conflicts and with accurate information, and whether any legislative reforms are needed to ensure that these fundamental principles are respected,” House General Counsel Douglas N. Letter told the justices in a filing Thursday.
He added: “Each day of delay harms Congress by depriving it of important information it needs to carry out its constitutional responsibilities.”
The subpoenas issued by the congressional committee and separately by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. are directed to the president’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA. It has said it will comply with the eventual court order, so turning over the records would not require any action on the president’s part.
The subpoena from the House committee was issued in April, before that body took up a formal impeachment inquiry. But Letter said impeachment proceedings underscore the need for the court to move quickly.
Consovoy said the Supreme Court should not let such an “unprecedented” subpoena move forward without its explicit consideration and approval.
“Whether the committee was engaging in prohibited law enforcement, whether it was investigating in an area where it can pass constitutional legislation, and whether it had statutory authority are all important issues over which there is a serious legal dispute,” he wrote.
In October, a panel of the D.C. Circuit issued a 2-to-1 ruling that traced the long history of courts upholding Congress’s investigative authority.
“We conclude that in issuing the challenged subpoena, the committee was engaged in a ‘legitimate legislative investigation,’ rather than an impermissible law-enforcement inquiry,” wrote Judge David S. Tatel, who was joined by Judge Patricia A. Millett. Both were nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents.
“It is not at all suspicious that the committee would focus an investigation into presidential financial disclosures on the accuracy and sufficiency of the sitting president’s filings. That the committee began its inquiry at a logical starting point betrays no hidden law-enforcement purpose.”
Tatel said the court did not need to decide whether Congress can subpoena a sitting president because the order was directed at the accounting firm — not Trump.
In her dissent, Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump nominee, said if the House wants to investigate possible wrongdoing by the president, it should do so by invoking its constitutional impeachment powers — not through legislative oversight. (The House subsequently opened an impeachment inquiry but focused on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, not financial impropriety.)
The majority said Rao’s view laid out in her dissent would “reorder the very structure of the Constitution” and “enfeeble the legislative branch.”
“The dissent cites nothing in the Constitution or case law — and there is nothing — that compels Congress to abandon its legislative role at the first scent of potential illegality and confine itself exclusively to the impeachment process. Nor does anything in the dissent’s lengthy recitation of historical examples dictate that result,” Tatel wrote.
Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Disclosure of Trump’s Financial Records
The court set a brisk briefing schedule in the case, which concerns a subpoena from a House committee.
The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked an appeals court ruling that required President Trump’s accounting firm to turn over financial records to a House committee.
The court’s brief order gave no reasons, and there were no noted dissents.
The court’s stay was in one sense routine, maintaining the status quo while the court decides whether to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal in the case. But it also suggested, given that it takes five votes to grant a stay, that the court viewed the legal questions presented by the case as substantial enough to warrant further consideration.
The court set a speedy briefing schedule, requiring Mr. Trump to file his petition seeking review by Dec. 5. The court could announce whether it will hear the case in the coming weeks and, if it does, issue a decision by June.
A Supreme Court ruling in the case could yield a major decision on the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch and on the role of the court in enforcing the separation of powers.
The justices are likely to consider the case alongside a similar one concerning a subpoena from Manhattan prosecutors to Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, seeking eight years of business and personal tax returns. That case is further along at the Supreme Court, as Mr. Trump has already filed a petition seeking review and the prosecutors have filed a brief urging the court to deny review.
In both cases, Mr. Trump sued to stop Mazars from complying with subpoenas for his financial records. Federal appeals courts ruled against Mr. Trump in both cases.
Monday’s stay order concerned a subpoena that the House Oversight and Reform Committee issued in April after it learned that Mr. Trump’s ethics disclosure forms did not list a debt for hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 election. Mr. Trump and his company reimbursed the president’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, for payments to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The president has denied the relationship.
Mr. Cohen also told the committee that Mr. Trump had inflated and deflated descriptions of his assets on financial statements to obtain loans and reduce his taxes.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the subpoena was improper because the committee lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for seeking the information. A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected that argument.
In the Supreme Court, lawyers for the committee argued that its investigation was driven by its legislative and oversight responsibilities. They added that the “rapidly advancing impeachment inquiry also makes it particularly important that Congress not be deprived of the information sought by the subpoena.”
On Nov. 18, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. entered a temporary “administrative stay” in the case. The new stay order was issued by the full court.
The case from New York concerns a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, for eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and business tax returns in connection with the hush-money payments.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, ruled this month against Mr. Trump. The court, in a focused ruling, said state prosecutors may require third parties to turn over a sitting president’s financial records for use in a grand jury investigation.
The New York case involves more ambitious legal arguments. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in a petition seeking review of the Second Circuit’s decision, said he was immune from criminal investigation while he remained in office.
The curious lack of explanation or dissents is something to note.
next to their name…
