Supreme Court holds first live arguments by phone
Coronavirus pandemic forces Supreme Court to livestream arguments; David Spunt reports.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear oral arguments via teleconference in high-profile cases centered on whether President Trump can be shielded from congressional and state subpoenas for his personal banking and accounting records.
The first two cases, Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bank, have been consolidated as they both deal with Democrat-led House committees subpoenaing records, including tax returns from Trump's financial institutions. At issue is the extent a sitting president can be subject to congressional oversight – under "valid legislative purposes"– of his private business dealings before he took office.
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A House Oversight Committee subpoena came after the president's former attorney Michael Cohen testified his client underreported or overstated figures to the government. Cohen is serving a three-year federal sentence for lying to Congress and financial-related offenses.
The House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and Capital One for financial records of Trump, his adult children and his businesses — which may or may not include his tax returns, as Deutsche Bank has claimed they do not have them. Those records come in the context of a probe of lending practices by major financial institutions, and allegations of Russian money laundering.
In these cases, the president has argued that the committees lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for wanting the records and that they are merely trying to expose the president's personal information.
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Following arguments for these cases, the Supreme Court will shift to Trump v. Vance, in which the president is fighting against a grand jury subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney's office seeking records from the Trump Organization and the accounting group Mazars that include the president's tax returns.
Trump contends that according to the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, a state court should not be allowed to investigate a sitting president. Lower courts disagreed and ruled that prosecutors are able to enforce the subpoenas, but they remain blocked while the Supreme Court handles the case.
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Lower courts ruled against Trump in each case, but the subpoenas remain blocked until the Supreme Court rules on them.
Fox News' Shannon Bream contributed to this report.
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