Supreme Court denies Dems' bid to fast-track ongoing fight for Trump financial records

[mystery-ak]

Supreme Court denies Dems' bid to fast-track ongoing fight for Trump financial records
By John Kruzel - 07/20/20 10:42 AM EDT

The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request by House Democrats to accelerate the timeline of remaining court battles over congressional subpoenas for President Trump’s tax returns.

The bid by lawmakers came in response to the court’s landmark 7-2 ruling earlier this month to shield a trove of Trump’s financial records from several Democratic-led House committees and return the dispute to lower courts for further litigation.

Under regular Supreme Court procedure, the court’s ruling would not reach the lower courts until Aug. 2, a delay Democrats sought to avoid by asking the justices to expedite the process.

But the conservative-majority court rejected that request Monday in an unsigned order. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the more liberal justices, said she would have granted it.

This developing report was last updated at 10:56 a.m.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/508092-supreme-court-denies-dems-bid-to-fast-track-ongoing-fight-for-trump

[Elderberry]

Justices reject House’s request to fast-track release of opinion on Trump’s financial records

SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 7/20/2020

https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/07/justices-reject-houses-request-to-fast-track-release-of-opinion-on-trumps-financial-records/#more-295363

Under the Supreme Court’s rules, that decision would normally go into effect on Aug. 3, 25 days after the court’s opinion was released. But on July 13 the House committees asked the court to put the decisions into effect immediately. The committees emphasized that they have tried to move quickly throughout the process, but that their investigations “are ongoing, remain urgent, and have been impeded by the lack of finality in” the litigation. Because the current term of the House of Representatives expires on January 3, 2021, the House explained, the subpoenas will expire and the committees’ investigations will end at that point.

Trump pushed back, telling the justices that there was no good reason to expedite the release of the Mazars decision. Trump argued that the “House’s argument that its ability to consider legislation is being compromised” “rings hollow”: The committees, Trump suggested, still cannot identify any possible legislation for which they would need the president’s financial records. And noting that the president and Congress have traditionally tried to reach some sort of compromise on requests for documents, Trump stressed that the committees “should be productively using the window of time until the judgments issue to attempt to resolve (or at least narrow) this dispute — not seeking to rush back into court.”

The orders on Monday were a victory for the president, albeit a relatively minor one. The ruling in the Mazars case will go into effect eventually, and proceedings in the lower courts will resume. But with only a few months before the 2020 election, and the likelihood that whoever loses in the lower courts will appeal, any delay further increases the chances that the president’s documents will not be turned over to Congress before the election, if at all.

More at link.