US President Donald Trump arrives to speak about the administration’s coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing plan at the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, September 28, 2020.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
A federal appeals court on Wednesday kicked a legal battle over President Donald Trump’s financial statements to a lower court, delaying House Democrats’ efforts to obtain years of personal and business data from the president.
In its ruling, a panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit dropped a district court judgment and backed up a Supreme Court ruling over the summer ordering lower judges to question the separation of powers. in the business.
Two of those appellate judges were appointed by Democratic presidents and one was appointed by Trump.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee issued a subpoena in 2019 for eight years of Trump’s data from the accounting firm Mazars USA. The committee’s Democratic majority said it sought the data as part of its legislative and supervisory duties and as part of ongoing investigations.
Trump’s lawyers have tried to block the release of the data, arguing that Congress was on a fishing expedition to hurt him politically.
A U.S. district court and federal appeals panel upheld the subpoena. But the Supreme Court in July expressed concern about the division of powers between the legislative and executive branches of the government.
In their brief verdict on Wednesday, the appellate judges noted that they “do not express an opinion on whether this case will become negotiable when the subpoena ends, or on the merits of the parties’ arguments.”
The Oversight panel said Chairman Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., plans to reissue the subpoena to Mazars at the start of the next Congress.
“It remains critical that the Supervisory Committee – and the House in general – be able to obtain prompt enforcement of the subpoena without the risk that investigative subjects will thwart their efforts due to delays in the lawsuit,” said counsel for the commission earlier in December against the court of appeal.
A spokeswoman for the committee and the White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the appeal court ruling.