House Democrats renew push to get Trump financial records
House Democrats have renewed their push to obtain President Trump's financial records after the Supreme Court ruled against them last week but allowed them to resubmit the case to a lower court.
Douglas Letter, the House's top attorney, wrote to the Supreme Court Monday evening, requesting that it effectuate its July 9 ruling.
Supreme Court rulings usually don't take effect right away, and House Democrats can't refile in lower court until it does. The court's ruling is slated to take effect in August, but Letter argued that this was too long to wait.
“The Committees’ investigations are ongoing, remain urgent, and have been impeded by the lack of finality in these litigations, which were initiated in April 2019,” Letter and other House lawyers wrote.
In the 7-2 decision, the justices last week turned away a trio of subpoenas from Democratic-led House committees. The rejected subpoenas wanted access to Trump's financial records in association to Mazars USA — his accounting firm — Deutsche Bank and Capital One, the House's argument being that they were needed to carry out oversight.
The court said that the lower courts that granted the subpoenas didn't sufficiently reflect on the potential repercussions the court orders could have on the separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch.
The House is able to resubmit the subpoenas, but the lower courts must now put the requests through a multistep test to discern whether subpoenas are appropriate. Any future request, the court asserted, must be carefully crafted and narrow in scope, as to not overreach in an attempt to gain access to records that are not germane.
“Immediate issuance of this Court’s judgments would accelerate the proceedings in the lower courts so that the Committees may obtain the materials necessary to undertake any needed legislative reforms as quickly as possible to address, among other issues, conflicts of interest that threaten to undermine the Presidency, money-laundering and unsafe lending practices, and foreign interference in U.S. elections and any other ongoing threats to national security arising from President Trump’s foreign financial entanglements,” the House attorneys wrote.
