TThe Supreme Court declined to speed up the House subpoena effort seeking President Trump’s financial records and tax returns, denying requests from Democrat-led committees asking the high court to send cases to the lower courts faster than usual.
“Requests for orders to issue the judgments immediately, filed with the Chief Justice and forwarded to the Court, are denied,” the brief order from the Supreme Court said Monday, adding only that “Judge Sotomayor would grant the requests. ”
It usually takes 25 days for the Supreme Court to send cases to the appeals court for further litigation, but Democrats asked judges to bring that deadline forward two weeks. On July 7, the Supreme Court ruled largely in Trump’s favor that lower courts failed to adequately consider the separation of powers between Congress and the presidency by ruling in favor of Democrats, who will not be able to continue their fight in the courts until August. 3)
In April 2019, the House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank seeking information related to a number of Trump’s financial problems, including possible foreign transactions and his tax returns. The House of Representatives Oversight Committee sent a subpoena to Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, seeking commercial information about the president. The Supreme Court said Trump argued that the subpoenas lacked a legitimate legislative purpose and violated the separation of powers, with Democrats generally triumphing in the district and appeals courts.
In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against the Democrats and said the case would be returned to the lower courts for further consideration. Court President John Roberts wrote the opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito disagreed and argued that the superior court had not gone far enough in protecting the presidency from such congressional citations.
“The courts below did not adequately take into account the important separation-of-power concerns implied by subpoenas by Congress for the President’s information,” the Supreme Court ruled, adding: “The approach proposed by the House, which is based on precedents that did not involve the President’s documents do not adequately take into account the major separation-of-power problems posed by congressional subpoenas for the president’s information.The House’s approach would essentially leave no limits to the power of Congress to cite records personal power. Unlimited citation power could transform established practice of political branches and allow Congress to grow at the expense of the president. ”
The Supreme Court continued: “These separation-of-powers concerns are undoubtedly implied by the subpoenas here, which do not represent a current legislative effort but a clash between rival branches of government over records of intense political interest to all involved. The branch conflict does not go away simply because subpoenas request personal documents or because the president sued in a personal capacity. ”
Following this ruling, attorneys for the House Democrats told the Supreme Court that their investigations into Trump’s finances “are ongoing, remain urgent and have been hampered by the lack of purpose in these litigation.” . The higher court said Democrats would have to wait a few more weeks to resume the fight.
Manhattan Democratic District Attorney Cyrus Vance had better luck in the Supreme Court during his search for Trump’s financial records, in which, in another decision 7-2, the Supreme Court ruled that “Article II and the Supremacy clause does not exclude or categorically require a high standard for issuing a state criminal citation to an acting president. ”
“This is all political prosecution,” Trump tweeted after that ruling. “I won the witch hunt for Mueller and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. It’s not fair for this Presidency or Administration!”
Trump’s legal team told the courts last week that Trump intends to continue to fight the New York grand jury subpoena.
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