House lawyers asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to reject President Trump’s efforts to keep congressional investigators from seeing his tax returns, noting that the financial records could factor into the “rapidly advancing impeachment inquiry,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
The Supreme Court has before it two cases involving Trump’s financial records. One is his lawsuit seeking to block a House subpoena of his accounting firm, and the other is a challenge to a subpoena issued by state investigators in New York. Lower courts have backed the legality to the subpoenas in both cases. Trump’s personal attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to halt the enforcement of the subpoenas, setting the stage for a historic separation-of-powers battle if the high court does ultimately take the cases up on the merits.
The House’s filing on Thursday argued against Trump’s request that the Supreme Court put on pause an appeals court ruling upholding the House subpoena while the President formally appeals the case. If the Supreme Court does put on hold that ruling, then it should consider its next steps in an expedited fashion that would allow the case be heard this term, the House argued.
The filing laid out a proposed briefing schedule that would allow the justices to consider whether to take up the case at their Dec. 13 conference.
House Democrats’ lawyers argued that the fact that the House is engaged in an impeachment inquiry, the subpoenas for Trump’s tax returns have heightened significance and could play a role in how congressional investigators move forward with impeachment.
Read the filing below:
