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Supreme Court Rules Trump Cannot Block Release of Financial Records

Two rulings clear the way for prosecutors in New York to seek President Trump’s financial records, but the justices stopped Congress for now.

President Trump had asked the court to block three sets of subpoenas that sought information from his accountants or bankers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/us/trump-t...court.html

By Adam Liptak

Published July 9, 2020Updated July 10, 2020

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way on Thursday for prosecutors in New York to seek President Trump’s financial records in a stunning defeat for Mr. Trump and a major statement on the scope and limits of presidential power.

The decision in the case said Mr. Trump had no absolute right to block release of the papers and would take its place with landmark rulings that required President Richard M. Nixon to turn over tapes of Oval Office conversations and that forced President Bill Clinton to provide evidence in a sexual harassment suit.

“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. He added that Mr. Trump might still raise objections to the scope and relevance of the subpoena requesting the records.

The majority also rejected the Justice Department’s more limited argument that state prosecutors must satisfy a demanding standard when they seek information concerning a sitting president.

The New York case concerned a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat. It sought eight years of business and personal tax records in connection with an investigation of the role that Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization played in hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Mr. Vance expressed satisfaction with the ruling. “This is a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one — not even a president — is above the law,” he said in a statement. “Our investigation, which was delayed for almost a year by this lawsuit, will resume, guided as always by the grand jury’s solemn obligation to follow the law and the facts, wherever they may lead.”

Both Mr. Trump and his company reimbursed Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, for payments made to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed that she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen was also involved in payments to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who had also claimed she had a relationship with Mr. Trump. The president has denied the relationships.

Mr. Trump sued to stop the accounting firm from turning over the records, but lower courts ruled against him. In a unanimous ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, said state prosecutors may require third parties to turn over a sitting president’s financial records for use in a grand jury investigation.

The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling.

Chief Justice Roberts drew on history to demonstrate that sitting presidents have been forced to provide information in criminal proceedings, starting with a subpoena to Thomas Jefferson in Aaron Burr’s 1807 trial for treason. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the president could be subpoenaed.

“In the two centuries since the Burr trial,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “successive presidents have accepted Marshall’s ruling that the chief executive is subject to subpoena.”

And in the Nixon and Clinton cases, the chief justice wrote, the court relied on Chief Justice Marshall’s ruling.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that it was of no moment that the earlier subpoenas were federal, while the one seeking Mr. Trump’s documents came from a state prosecutor.

He rejected three of the president’s arguments: that such subpoenas would distract him from his duties, that he would be stigmatized, and that he would be subject to harassment from elected prosecutors around the nation.

There was little reason to think that a subpoena for records held by third parties would impose a significant burden on a president, the chief justice wrote. There is nothing “inherently stigmatizing,” he added, about furnishing information relevant to a criminal investigation.

As for harassment, he wrote that the court had rejected a similar argument in the Clinton case, and that state and federal courts could address bad faith investigations.

“Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our court established that no citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the president is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the chief justice’s majority opinion in the case, Trump v. Vance, No. 19-635.

Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Gorsuch, voted with the majority but did not adopt its reasoning. Justice Kavanaugh agreed that the president was not absolutely immune from having his records subpoenaed but said lower courts should require prosecutors to show a “demonstrated, specific need” for the information they sought.

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