House Tells Court It Will Accept Delay on Trump Subpoena
House Tells Court It Won’t Oppose 10-Day Delay on Trump Subpoena
(Bloomberg) -- The House said it will accept a delay until the end of the month on its subpoena for President Donald Trump’s financial records, while the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to order a longer halt.
In a letter to the court, House General Counsel Douglas Letter said lawmakers would go along with an administrative stay that would extend a lower court’s existing halt until Nov. 30.
The letter means the Supreme Court won’t need to make any immediate decision in the case, one of two filed by Trump last week as he tries to keep his financial information secret. Trump is separately asking the court to consider his bid to prevent his tax returns from being turned over to a New York prosecutor.
The cases, which threaten to pull the court into a deeply political dispute, arrive as House Democrats are pressing an impeachment investigation of Trump. The court could say in the next several weeks how it will handle the two cases.
In the House case, a federal appeals court in Washington said the House Oversight and Reform Committee could subpoena eight years of Trump’s records from Mazars USA, his accounting firm. The subpoena doesn’t explicitly ask for Trump’s tax returns.
Ethics Law
The committee says it wants the documents because it is considering revising the federal ethics-in-government laws. Trump’s lawyers say the primary purpose is law enforcement, something they say is beyond Congress’s legislative powers.
The oversight panel issued the subpoena before House Democrats began their impeachment inquiry, and the request at least for now isn’t tied to that investigation.
Trump is seeking to block the lower court decision while the Supreme Court considers whether to take up an appeal he has promised to file. In the letter submitted Monday, the House said it will file a brief by Nov. 22 opposing the request for a longer delay.
In the New York case, Manhattan District Attorney General Cyrus Vance is investigating whether the Trump Organization falsified business records to disguise hush payments to two women who claimed they had sex with him before he took office. In an appeal filed Thursday, Trump contends the president has broad immunity from criminal investigations while in office.
As in the congressional case, the subpoena is directed at Mazars and doesn’t demand that the president himself turn over any documents.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo
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