Supreme Court set to decide who can see Trump’s
tax returns, financial records
The rulings, to be unveiled Thursday, could reshape
the balance of power between Congress and the White House in the most dramatic
way since Watergate.
The U.S. Supreme Court will be ending its term
Thursday.
By JOSH
GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY
07/08/2020
06:27 PM EDT
Updated:
07/08/2020 10:52 PM EDT
The Supreme
Court is set to unveil its decision on Thursday about whether Congress gets to
see President Donald Trump’s tax returns and financial records, a ruling that
could reshape the balance of power between lawmakers and the White House in the
most dramatic way since Watergate.
The court’s
final opinion day of its 2019-20 term also includes a related dispute about
whether New York prosecutors can similarly access Trump’s financial records,
held by his accounting firm and banks.
A decision
to reject Trump’s legal challenges could result in voters getting to see the
tax returns he has resisted disclosing since launching his presidential
campaign in 2015. The justices are also set to rule on grand jury subpoenas
that a Manhattan prosecutor is using to demand many of the same tax and
financial records in a criminal investigation that appears to be focused on the
tax practices of Trump’s business empire.
The
president sent personal lawyers to argue against both sets of subpoenas, and he
seems unlikely to hold back if the rulings go against him, especially if
Republican-appointed justices or his own appointees vote against him.
After a
pair of losses last month in cases involving LGBTQ rights in the workplace and
the administration’s effort to end protections for so-called Dreamers, Trump
invoked unusually vivid imagery as he lashed out at the court and tried to turn
the defeats into a campaign issue.
“These
horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court
are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves
Republicans or Conservatives,” Trump wrote. “We need more Justices or we will
lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020! “
While
rulings in the closely watched subpoena cases could affect the president’s
reelection bid, the decisions could also redefine Congress’ oversight powers
and the ability of state and local prosecutors to explore potential criminality
on the part of the president or his associates. At the heart of both cases are
questions about whether third-party companies, like Trump’s accounting firm
Mazars USA, can be compelled to produce the president’s personal documents while
he’s in office.
By
releasing decisions into July, the Supreme Court has parted with its usual
practice over the last few decades of issuing its final — and most
controversial — opinions of the term on one of the last days of June, a
departure that coincides with broader delays resulting from the coronavirus
pandemic.
Covid-19
outbreaks in the United States led the court to suspend in-person arguments,
hold its first-ever telephone arguments and push some cases into the fall. The
Trump subpoena cases were originally set to be heard on March 31, but the
actual, virtual arguments were conducted on May 12.
The
justices have left only one other case to their final opinion day: a dispute
over whether a large swath of eastern Oklahoma is actually an Indian
reservation.
The fact
that rulings are expected in the Trump-focused cases does not promise that they
will definitively resolve those cases or ensure that they will be decided with
finality before the November election. It is possible that in either or both
cases the justices could articulate a legal standard to apply, but not dictate
an outcome and instead tell lower courts to delve into the issues again.
And even a
ruling in Congress’ favor doesn’t guarantee that lawmakers will move to make
Trump’s tax returns public before November.
Still,
while the New York prosecutor’s investigation could be considered more urgent
legally, since it involves a criminal investigation, the House inquiries may
pack more of a political punch. That’s because while records turned over under
a grand jury subpoena are required to be kept secret at least until charges are
filed, lawmakers are under no such obligation and could release the Trump
financial files in the lead-up to the election.
At issue in
the House case are subpoenas that House committees issued last year to Mazars
USA, as well as major Trump lenders Deutsche Bank and Capital One. All the
queries, according to lawmakers, are intended to inform efforts to update
ethics, disclosure and money laundering laws, as well as those pertaining to
foreign influence in elections and government.
But Trump’s
legal team argued that the demands were tantamount to political harassment, and
that the House’s claims of a “legislative purpose” were a pretense to simply
investigate the president.
When
arguments were eventually held on the disputes almost two months ago,
conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito sounded highly
sympathetic to the president’s arguments and hostile to the House’s.
The court’s
other three Republican appointees — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices
Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — were more equivocal and did not sound like
certain votes for Trump’s stance. Most of the court’s liberal justices seemed
to favor some authority for the House to get the information it is seeking.
The case
challenges lawmakers’ long-held principle that Congress has broad authority to
seek documents it needs to support its constitutional lawmaking power, as well
as the duty to oversee the executive branch’s implementation of the laws it has
passed. But the justices repeatedly questioned House Counsel Douglas Letter
about the limits to Congress’ investigative power and the outer edge of what
might be considered a “legitimate legislative purpose” for its investigations.
At its
core, the president’s legal fight with Congress is over how close a link the
courts will require between House committees’ investigative efforts aimed at
allegations of presidential misconduct and lawmakers’ specific plans to pass
legislation.
So far, the
courts have agreed that a broad interest in government oversight and the
possibility of changes to mundane legislation like financial disclosure laws is
enough to justify congressional subpoenas — and that history has shown this was
the precise intent of the framers of the Constitution.
Trump’s
lawyers, though, contended that investigating whether a president broke the law
in his financial dealings is beyond Congress’ legislative powers and that,
outside of an impeachment inquiry, no congressional action to pursue such
allegations is legitimate.
That would
appear to leave Congress with only a few options for reining in a president who
is defying the law: withholding approval of legislation, funding or
presidential nominees. Criminal law enforcement is also a possibility, but that
is unlikely at the federal level because of a Justice Department opinion
barring indictment of a sitting president.
One central
point of discussion by the lawyers and the justices during oral arguments was
the 1997 Supreme Court decision that rejected similar immunity claims from
President Bill Clinton’s lawyers and allowed a sexual-harassment civil suit
against him by an Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, to proceed.
Clinton’s
statements in his subsequent deposition in that suit prolonged the Whitewater
independent counsel investigation and led to his impeachment by the House.
Several
justices said Trump’s lawyers were ignoring or downplaying Clinton v. Jones,
which green-lighted civil litigation that many would consider less weighty than
a congressional subpoena or a criminal investigation.
“The aura
of this case is really: Sauce for the goose serves the gander, as well,”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was appointed by Clinton, said during the
arguments.
The other
case considered by the justices stemmed from a drive by the Manhattan district
attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., to use state-level grand jury subpoenas to get eight
years of Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.
Trump’s
personal lawyers said permitting such prospecting would lead to a flurry of
similar requests, potentially unleashing 2,300 local prosecutors to target the
president.
Last
September, Trump sued Vance to try to block grand jury subpoenas as part of an
investigation into alleged fraud by the Trump Organization and other matters.
Trump’s
attorneys made a sweeping argument that presidents are completely immune from
all concrete steps in the criminal justice process —ranging from subpoena to
arrest and prosecution — while in office.
Despite
more than a year of litigation, precisely what Trump-related tax and financial
records the accounting firm and the banks have and would turn over in response
to the subpoenas remains somewhat murky. Mazars is believed to have the
president’s tax returns dating back more than a decade. The House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee’s subpoena to that firm demands a wide array of financial
records spanning eight years, but doesn’t explicitly seek tax returns.
Last
August, in response to an order from a federal appeals court in New York,
Capital One said it had no tax returns from Trump or his family. Deutsche Bank
said it does not have the president’s returns but has some for two people
linked to Trump, believed to be family members.
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