Supreme Court Does Not Allow House To Immediately Obtain Trump Financial Records
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that for now, Congress will not be able to get President Donald Trump’s financial records.
The 7-2 opinion in Trump v. Mazars USA, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, states that Congress has the power to subpoena the president’s financial records. However, the Supreme Court sent the case back to lower courts to reassess the matter with a new and narrower interpretation of Congress’ power to subpoena the chief executive’s records.
Minutes earlier, the court ruled in a 7-2 decision against the president in the case of Trump v. Vance, allowing the Manhattan district attorney to obtain Trump’s tax returns. It is unlikely to do so until after the election.
Following the rulings, Trump rambled semi-coherently on Twitter.
The Mazars case arose from investigations into Trump launched by multiple congressional committees after Democrats won control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections.
Even before he took office in January 2017, Trump’s election posed an unprecedented ethical problem. He was a self-proclaimed billionaire with vast real estate holdings and investments in countries around the world. He was the first president since Richard Nixon to refuse to disclose his tax returns to the public. And he planned to maintain ownership of all of his business holdings with the fig leaf of separation being that his two adult sons would run the business while he sat in the White House.
In the spring of 2019, three House committees issued subpoenas to Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, and his lenders Deutsche Bank and Capital One as part of separate investigations into executive branch disclosure laws, international money laundering and the president’s potential undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Mazars, Deutsche Bank and Capital One all planned on complying with the subpoenas until Trump intervened in court to block them. To do so, he made a sweeping argument that Congress is not allowed to investigate...
