July 9 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court issued split decisions Thursday involving two legal cases concerning efforts to see President Donald Trump’s financial records, including tax returns.
The high court ruled in one case, Trump vs. Vance, that New York City prosecutors can see the president’s tax records.
In the 7-2 decision, justices ruled Trump must hand over the records under a grand jury subpoena from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. It seeks nearly a decade’s worth of financial records.
The grand jury subpoenaed Trump’s records as part of an investigation into “hush money” payments the president supposedly made to two women to keep extramarital affairs secret.
The high court agreed with a lower court ruling that said the subpoena is lawful because it’s directed at Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, and not the president. Trump’s attorneys argued that a sitting president cannot be indicted and is therefore immune from any part of the criminal justice process, including grand jury subpoenas.
In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts said the presidency does not include immunity from prosecution.
“Article II and the Supremacy Clause do not categorically preclude, or require a heightened standard for, the issuance of a state criminal subpoena to a sitting president,” he wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
In its second decision in Trump vs. Mazars, the court ruled against Democratic lawmakers seeking Trump’s fiscal records that were first requested after the president’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen testified that he manipulated the value of Trump’s assets for personal gain.
Also a result of a 7-2 vote, the ruling sends the case back to the lower court so it can further review concerns about separation of powers.
“The courts below did not take adequate account of the significant separation of powers concerns implicated by congressional subpoenas for the president’s information,” Roberts wrote for the majority in the decision.
Thomas and Alito were also the dissenting votes in the Mazars ruling.
In that case, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld a lower court ruling that said the firm must hand over the records, but Trump’s attorneys challenged the decision on the grounds that lawmakers don’t have subpoena authority for anything other than writing laws.
The court may also rule in a third related case Thursday involving Deutsche Bank. In that case, a lower appellate court ruled in favor of House lawmakers and said there’s a legitimate concern involving national security. Trump’s lawyers challenged the ruling, arguing that the investigation was beyond Congress’ powers.
Trump never released his tax returns during his 2016 campaign, as is traditional for presidential candidates. He initially cited an audit as the reason and promised to release the returns when it was complete. Other times, he has been non-committal about releasing them for public scrutiny.
During oral arguments in May, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared to side with the court’s four Democratic appointees in questioning why Congress shouldn’t be allowed to determine whether its investigations have a legislative purpose.
