Washington • The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked an appeals court ruling that required President Donald Trump’s accounting firm to turn over financial records to a House committee.
The court’s brief order gave no reasons, and there were no noted dissents.
The court’s stay was in one sense routine, maintaining the status quo while the court decides whether to hear Trump’s appeal in the case. But it also suggested, given that it takes five votes to grant a stay, that the court viewed the legal questions presented by the case as substantial enough to warrant further consideration.
The court set a speedy briefing schedule, requiring Trump to file his petition seeking review by Dec. 5. The court could announce whether it will hear the case in the coming weeks and, if it does, issue a decision by June.
A Supreme Court ruling in the case could yield a major decision on the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch and on the role of the court in enforcing the separation of powers.
The justices are likely to consider the case alongside a similar one concerning a subpoena from Manhattan prosecutors to Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, seeking eight years of business and personal tax returns. That case is further along at the Supreme Court, as Trump has already filed a petition seeking review and the prosecutors have filed a brief urging the court to deny review.
In both cases, Trump sued to stop Mazars from complying with subpoenas for his financial records. Federal appeals courts ruled against Trump in both cases.
Monday’s stay order concerned a subpoena that the House Oversight and Reform Committee issued in April after it learned that Trump’s ethics disclosure forms did not list a debt for hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 election. Trump and his company reimbursed the president’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, for payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Trump. The president has denied the relationship.
Cohen also told the committee that Trump had inflated and deflated descriptions of his assets on financial statements to obtain loans and reduce his taxes.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the subpoena was improper because the committee lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for seeking the information. A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected that argument.
In the Supreme Court, lawyers for the committee argued that its investigation was driven by its legislative and oversight responsibilities. They added that the “rapidly advancing impeachment inquiry also makes it particularly important that Congress not be deprived of the information sought by the subpoena.”
On Nov. 18, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. entered a temporary “administrative stay” in the case. The new stay order was issued by the full court.
The case from New York concerns a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, for eight years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns in connection with the hush-money payments.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Manhattan, ruled this month against Trump. The court, in a focused ruling, said state prosecutors may require third parties to turn over a sitting president’s financial records for use in a grand jury investigation.
The New York case involves more ambitious legal arguments. Trump’s lawyers, in a petition seeking review of the 2nd Circuit’s decision, said he was immune from criminal investigation while he remained in office.
