President Trump and the House appear to have reached a narrow agreement that would speed up an appeal in a case where the President is trying to stop a Congressional subpoena for information from his longtime accountant from being enforced.
In a late Wednesday filing in the D.C. circuit, Trump and the House jointly ask the D.C. appeals court to speed up its hearing of the case, which came after Trump hired personal attorneys to prevent his accountant from carrying out the subpoena.
Under the deal, Trump would get a stay of the subpoena’s enforcement until the case is decided, while House Democrats would get accelerated consideration of the case.
The motion came after D.C. federal judge Amit Mehta denied a request from Trump to halt the subpoena’s enforcement on Monday, and after a federal judge in Manhattan denied a similar request on Wednesday regarding separate subpoenas to banks that had conducted business with Trump.
The two parties write in the filing that if the court grants the request to speed up the case, the House “agrees to suspend the time for production set by the subpoena during the pendency of this appeal.”
“Mazars agrees to continue collecting and preparing responsive documents but not to produce any documents in response to the subpoena during that period,” the document reads.
House Democrats have accused Trump of filing the lawsuits as part of a strategy to delay their fulfillment beyond the 2020 election. House general counsel Douglas Letter raised that concern at the hearing in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, saying that Congress “desperately do[es] not want that to happen.”
Under a proposed briefing schedule included in the filing, the case would be fully briefed by July 12. After that, the parties ask that the “Court hold oral argument as soon as the Court deems practicable.”
The subpoena at issue in the D.C. appeals court was sent by House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in April to Mazars USA LLP as part of an investigation into whether the President would routinely cook the books of the Trump Organization, and into whether Trump is complying with various ethics requirements.
Read the filing below:
IANAL so I have no idea if this is good or bad news…
Also: anybody know if an appeal has been filed about the Deutsche Bank/Capital One stuff from yesterday? Haven’t seen anything in the MSM… All I seem to recall is the request for a stay was rejected by the judge.
This is probably a reasonable compromise. Both sides get what is most important to them.
Why give the White House this concession ? It seems like the legal case is clear, and the House can ask that any appeals be expedited if the appeals court grants an emergency injunction. Not pressuring Mazar’s to provide the documents within five working days is just letting the WH delay the appeals application since there is now no pressure on them.
If you could, please explain what the WH hopes to achieve here - do they think they’re going to win on appeal?
They hope to drag it out and run the clock.
This is a shit compromise from the House, delaying the appeals court process until July. And there would be the inevitable appeal to the Supremes after that.