SPLIT DECISION ON TRUMP FINANCES

PROSECUTORS CAN SEEK RECORDS; CONGRESS STOPPED FOR NOW.

What happened

In a separate case, the justices kept a hold on banking and other documents about Trump, family members and his businesses Congress has been seeking for more than a year. The court said that while Congress has significant power to demand the president’s personal information, it is not limitless.

What it means

The court turned away the broadest arguments by Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department that the president is immune from investigation while he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than normal to obtain the tax records. But it is unclear when a lower court judge might order the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena to be enforced.

The fight over the congressional subpoenas has significant implications regarding a president’s power to refuse a formal request from Congress. In a separate fight at the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., over a congressional demand for the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn, the administration is making broad arguments that the president’s close advisers are “absolutely immune” from having to appear.

Trump, the only president in modern times who has refused to make his tax returns public, didn’t immediately regard the outcome as a victory even though it is likely to prevent his opponents in Congress from obtaining potentially embarrassing personal and business records ahead of Election Day.

The documents have the potential to reveal details on everything from possible misdeeds to the nature of the president’s wealth.

Trump said on Twitter “This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!”

The rejection of Trump’s claims of presidential immunity marked the latest instance where Trump’s broad assertion of executive power has been rejected.

Trump’s two high court appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, joined the majority in both cases along with Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices. Roberts wrote both opinions.

“Congressional subpoenas for information from the President, however, implicate special concerns regarding the separation of powers. The courts below did not take adequate account of those concerns,” Roberts wrote in the congressional case.

What happens now

The ruling returns the congressional case to lower courts, with no clear prospect for when it might ultimately be resolved.

Promising to keep pressing the case in the lower courts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said Thursday’s decision “is not good news for President Trump.”

“The Court has reaffirmed the Congress’s authority to conduct oversight on behalf of the American people,” Pelosi said.

The tax returns case also is headed back to a lower court. Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm, holds the tax returns and has indicated it would comply with a court order. Because the grand jury process is confidential, Trump’s taxes normally would not be made public.