House to quickly revive legal effort to get Trump’s financial records

Trump’s legal team said it did not immediately have a position on the House’s request and needed more time to review it, Letter indicated, and he urged the justices to set an expedited schedule for the president’s lawyers to weigh in.

“Immediate issuance of this Court’s judgments,” he continued, “would accelerate the proceedings in the lower courts so that the Committees may obtain the materials necessary to undertake any needed legislative reforms as quickly as possible to address, among other issues, conflicts of interest that threaten to undermine the Presidency, money-laundering and unsafe lending practices, and foreign interference in U.S. elections and any other ongoing threats to national security arising from President Trump’s foreign financial entanglements.”

The high court ruling appeared to doom Democrats’ efforts to obtain Trump’s financial records before the 2020 election, with any renewed consideration in the lower courts likely to go on for months. But the House’s effort to quickly revive the matter suggests they’re still approaching the case with urgency.

Though Letter doesn’t suggest that the House is pegging its request to get Trump’s records before the election, he emphasizes in the filing that Congress‘ term ends on Jan. 3, 2021.

“[T]he Committees’ window of opportunity to litigate the remands in these cases, then obtain and review the subpoenaed documents, evaluate their significance to potential or pending legislation, draft such legislation or amendments, and shepherd that legislation through the bicameral process diminishes by the day,“ he wrote.

The Supreme Court said the judiciary had never had to consider the appropriateness of a congressional request for a president’s papers because such disputes in the past had always been resolved without litigation. With little history to guide them, the justices in a 7-2 ruling said lawmakers must carefully tailor any request for a president’s papers, detailing why they’re necessary to inform the legislative process and ensuring that their requests are tailored narrowly — seeking no more than what is necessary to inform their efforts.