By Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall
WASHINGTON -- President Trump's lawyers asked the Supreme Court
on Tuesday to quash congressional and criminal subpoenas seeking
financial records from his bankers and accountants, as justices
expressed concerns about the long-term consequences of the
dispute.
In Tuesday's first of two cases, the court considered subpoenas
for Trump-related records issued by three House committees that
oversee issues on federal ethics, bank secrecy, money-laundering
and foreign influence in U.S. elections.
"The subpoenas at issue here are unprecedented in every sense,"
Trump lawyer Patrick Strawbridge said at the outset of the court's
teleconferenced oral arguments. Democratic-led committees were
seeking the documents for improper reasons like hounding the
president, not for anything related to the passage of legislation,
Mr. Strawbridge said.
"These subpoenas are overreaching," he said. "They're an obvious
distraction."
House General Counsel Douglas Letter, defending subpoenas the
committees issued to Mazars USA LLP, Deutsche Bank AG and Capital
One Financial Corp., said the document demands were related to
important matters of public interest in which Congress should play
a role.
The Trump legal team's arguments "asked you to ignore a massive
amount of history," Mr. Letter said.
Justices across the ideological spectrum peppered both sides
about the ramifications of their positions.
Several justices asked why Mr. Trump should be able to stop the
House from reaching his records when President Nixon, in the
Watergate case, and President Clinton, in the Whitewater
investigation, were required to comply.
"You say this is one of a kind," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
told Mr. Strawbridge, but in the Whitewater investigation Mr.
Clinton's personal records were subpoenaed from his accountant and
Hillary Clinton's billing records were subpoenaed from her former
law firm.
Mr. Strawbridge said that Watergate and Whitewater were disputes
of "relatively recent vintage." Historical practice over the long
haul suggested the House's demands today amounted to "encroachment"
upon the president's constitutional prerogatives.
Liberal justices suggested that the president had greater
grounds for withholding White House documents than the personal,
nonofficial records at issue. Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey
Wall, representing the Justice Department, which is supporting Mr.
Trump, said the opposite was true: Congress's interest in reviewing
official activity was greater than inquiring into personal
matters.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh pressed Mr. Wall to distinguish the
Trump case from the Whitewater subpoena of Mr. Clinton's private
records. "I'll grant that subpoena looks very much like this one,"
Mr. Wall said, but "it was never litigated" and therefore had not
been approved by the Supreme Court.
While Mr. Trump's advocates had difficulty explaining why he
should be able to stop subpoenas when Presidents Nixon and Clinton
couldn't, Mr. Letter ran into trouble when justices asked whether
any legal guardrails should stop lawmakers from abusing their
investigatory power to harass political enemies.
"What I hold today will also apply to a future Senator [ Joseph]
McCarthy" harassing a future President Franklin Roosevelt, Justice
Stephen Breyer said, referring to the Wisconsin lawmaker who used
congressional proceedings to smear witnesses as communist
infiltrators.
Both liberal and conservative justices made clear they were
seeking limiting principles that would prevent Congress from
exercising unbridled subpoena authority, given that almost every
issue of public concern could conceivably be tied to potential
legislation. "That's very, very broad, and maybe limitless,"
Justice Neil Gorsuch said.
"We're concerned, as you've recognized, with the potential for
harassment," Chief Justice John Roberts told Mr. Letter.
Justice Elena Kagan, meanwhile, suggested Congress may need to
demonstrate some heightened need for the information it is
requesting, at least in some circumstances.
The second case, although it involved much of the same
information sought by the House, raises different legal questions.
There, a New York state prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney
Cyrus Vance Jr., is seeking records he suggests could point to
financial crimes by the Trump Organization, including hush-money
payments to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with
Mr. Trump, allegations the president has denied.
Jay Sekulow, another of Mr. Trump's private lawyers, said that
his client's records were immune from subpoena while he remained in
the White House. Otherwise, he suggested that local political
pressures, such as those felt by state judges and prosecutors in
New York who must run for office, could lead to relentless
harassment of the president.
"No county district attorney in our nation's history has issued
criminal process against the sitting president of the United
States, and for good reason: The Constitution does not allow it,"
Mr. Sekulow said.
Carey Dunne, the lawyer representing the district attorney, said
such speculation was unfounded. He observed that the Trump
Organization was based in Mr. Vance's jurisdiction and that
multiple reports and legal proceedings had pointed to possible
wrongdoing there. In contrast, he said, prosecutors elsewhere
likely lacked any legal basis to investigate the president's
records, and courts could step in to quash unfounded grand-jury
investigations.
"When a president acts as a private individual, he or she has
responsibilities like every other citizen, including compliance
with legal process," Mr. Dunne told the justices. "In particular,
this court has long held that American presidents are not above
having to provide evidence in response to a law-enforcement
inquiry."
Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin@wsj.com and Brent Kendall at
brent.kendall@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 12, 2020 14:20 ET (18:20 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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