The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)

Justices to take up dispute over subpoenas for Trump records

- By Mark Sherman

WASHINGTON (AP) >> The Supreme Court said Friday it will hear President Donald Trump’s pleas to keep his tax, bank and financial records private, a major confrontat­ion between the president and Congress that also could affect the 2020 presidenti­al campaign.

Arguments will take place in late March, and the justices are poised to issue decisions in June as Trump is campaignin­g for a second term. Rulings against the president could result in the quick release of personal financial informatio­n that Trump has sought strenuousl­y to keep private. The court also will decide whether the Manhattan district attorney can obtain eight years of Trump’s tax returns as part of an ongoing criminal investigat­ion.

The subpoenas are separate from the ongoing impeachmen­t proceeding­s against Trump, headed for a vote in the full House next week. Indeed, it’s almost certain the court won’t hear the cases until after a Senate trial over whether to remove Trump has ended.

Trump sued to prevent banks and accounting firms from complying with subpoenas for his records from three committees of the House of Representa­tives and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

In three separate cases, he has so far lost at every step, but the records have not been turned over pending a final court ruling. Now it will be up to a court that includes two Trump appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, to decide in a case with significan­t implicatio­ns rea-grding a president’s power to refuse a formal request from Congress.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow released a statement saying: “We are pleased that the Supreme Court granted review of the President’s three pending cases. These cases raise significan­t constituti­onal issues. We look forward to presenting our written and oral arguments.”

In two earlier cases over presidenti­al power, the justices acted unanimousl­y in requiring President Richard Nixon to turn over White House tapes to the

Watergate special prosecutor and in allowing a sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton to go forward. In those cases, three Nixon appointees and two Clinton appointees, respective­ly, voted against the president who chose them for the high court. A fourth Nixon appointee, William Rehnquist, sat out the tapes case because he had worked closely as a Justice Department official with some of the Watergate conspirato­rs whose upcoming trial spurred the subpoena for the Oval Office recordings.

In none of the cases are the subpoenas directed at Trump himself. Instead, House committees want records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, as well as the Mazars USA accounting firm. Mazars also is the recipient of Vance’s subpoena.

In each case, Vance and House Democrats have argued there is no compelling legal issue at stake, since they are seeking records from third parties, not Trump himself.

But Trump said in his appeals that the cases are the first time congressio­nal and local criminal investigat­ors have tried to pry free a president’s records to investigat­e wrongdoing. “This is a case of firsts,” Trump’s lawyers told the justices about congressio­nal demands for Trump’s financial records from Mazars.

The Vance case represents the first time in American history that a “state or local prosecutor has launched a criminal investigat­ion of the President,” the lawyers wrote.

Appellate courts in Washington, D.C., and New York brushed aside the Trump arguments in decisions that focused on the subpoenas being addressed to third parties and asking for records of Trump’s business and financial dealings as a private citizen, not as president.

Two congressio­nal committees subpoenaed the bank documents as part their investigat­ions into

Trump and his businesses. Deutsche Bank has been one for the few banks willing to lend to Trump after a series of corporate bankruptci­es and defaults starting in the early 1990s.

Vance and the House Oversight and Reform-Committee sought records from Mazars concerning Trump and his businesses based on payments that Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged to keep two women from airing their claims of affairs with Trump during the presidenti­al race.

 ?? EVAN VUCCI—ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benitez in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Dec. 13, 2019, in Washington.
EVAN VUCCI—ASSOCIATED PRESS President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benitez in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Dec. 13, 2019, in Washington.

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