The Supreme Court has ordered the House and the Trump administration to submit additional briefs to address the question of whether courts should preside over President Donald Trump’s financial records cases.
The order suggests that some of the justices are questioning whether the judiciary is fit to consider disputes between government branches.
The disputes dealing with the separation of power and absolute immunity concerns reached the Supreme Court after appellate judges upheld the subpoenas. Two of the cases stem from subpoenas that were issued earlier in the year by three House committees—Financial Services, Intelligence, and Oversight—as part of their probes over allegations of the president’s dealings. Meanwhile, the third case deals with a criminal investigation in Manhattan.
“These Committees are not legislating; they are avowedly engaging in law enforcement. All of them—to one degree or another—have acknowledged that the purpose of the investigations is to determine whether the President engaged in wrongdoing,” the lawyers state in the brief. “The events that led to the subpoenas’ issuance, the public statements surrounding these investigations, the nature of these demands themselves, and other evidence confirm that the Committees’ purpose is to find out if the President broke the law.”
The cases will be heard on May 12 by phone conference.