President Trump formally asked the Supreme Court Thursday to review lower court decisions upholding the House Oversight Committee subpoena of his accounting firm for his financial records, his lawyer Jay Sekulow confirmed to TPM.
The Supreme Court had previously issued a brief pause of the rulings and given Trump, who is fighting the case in his personal request, until noon Thursday to file his appeal.
Already the Supreme Court is considering whether to take up Trump’s appeal of a case he brought challenging a subpoena of his accounting firm issued by a New York grand jury. The Supreme Court will consider whether to take up that case at a Dec. 13 private conference. It is unclear whether it will consider taking up the House subpoena case at that conference as well.
In the petition filed Thursday, Trump argued that this was “a case of firsts,” because it was “the first time that Congress has subpoenaed personal records of a sitting President.”
So far, courts have overwhelmingly sided with the House in its effort to investigate the President, who has launched unprecedented resistance to congressional oversight.
In a 2-1 decision, a D.C. appellate court panel said in October that the House “possesses authority under both the House Rules and the Constitution to issue the subpoena” of Trump’s accounting firm Mazars and that “Mazars must comply.”
The next month, the full D.C. appeals court denied Trump’s request to rehear the case, leading to Thursday’s turn to the Supreme Court.
Trump argued Thursday that “under the D.C. Circuit’s decision, Congress can subpoena any private records it wishes from the President on the mere assertion that it is considering legislation that might require presidents to disclose that same information.”
He reiterated his previous claim in the litigation that the “Committee’s investigation of the President lacks a legitimate legislative purpose,” alleging, rather, that it is a “a law-enforcement investigation about uncovering whether the President engaged in wrongdoing.”
Read Trump’s petition that the Supreme Court take up the case below:
