A federal appeals court on Monday grappled with former President TrumpDonald TrumpPublicist ‘not associated’ with Kanye West at time of election incident: spokesperson Trump teases 2024 run during Orlando event with O’Reilly Jan. 6 panel details case for holding Meadows in contempt ahead of House vote MORE‘s effort to block a Democrat-led congressional committee in its renewed push to obtain his personal financial records.
A three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments over a 2019 subpoena from the House Oversight and Reform Committee demanding eight years of private financial papers from Trump’s accounting firm.
In the latest round of arguments in the case, which the Supreme Court sent back to the lower courts unresolved more than a year ago, the panel questioned how it should weigh the congressional subpoena and Trump’s claims of separation-of-powers concerns now that he is no longer in office.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned Trump’s lawyer over his argument that the former president is entitled to special treatment under the law that would shield his information from congressional subpoenas.
“The other part that worries me, in addition to the separation-of-powers concerns, is whether that’s really consistent with the rule of law and the peaceful and full complete transfer of power,” said Jackson, who was appointed by President BidenJoe BidenPublicist ‘not associated’ with Kanye West at time of election incident: spokesperson Trump teases 2024 run during Orlando event with O’Reilly Facebook exec says ‘people,’ not platform, to blame for vaccine misinformation MORE.
“That someone who used to be a private person becomes the president and returns to a private person is very fundamental in our constitutional system. And yet somehow now you say if a subpoena comes to him, in his post presidency, and the legislature establishes a reason for it … we should still say that they can’t get it from him,” she continued.
“And I’m trying to understand why that is, what makes him so different or special that he gets this kind of accommodation that other people in private life don’t.”
Cameron Norris, a lawyer representing Trump in the case, pointed to court precedents that held that former presidents retain some residual powers in certain circumstances once they leave office, and that congressional “disputes with former presidents still do implicate the separation of powers.”
The Supreme Court last year overruled a string of lower-court victories for the committee, holding that such interbranch legal disputes over access to a president’s personal information should be weighed more carefully by the courts.
After hearing a new round of arguments this year, …….
