SCOTUS Blog – Opinion analysis – Disputes over Trump financial records to continue: “This morning [July 9, 2020] the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited rulings in the battle over efforts to obtain financial records belonging to President Donald Trump. By a vote of 7-2, the justices sent a pair of cases challenging congressional subpoenas for the records back to the lower courts for another look, holding that subpoenas involving the president must be subject to a tougher standard than the courts had applied. In a third case, in which the president challenged a subpoena by a Manhattan district attorney, the justices – again by a vote of 7-2 – rejected the president’s claim that he is always immune from state grand jury proceedings while he is in office. But the decision in that case does not mean that the financial records that the grand jury seeks will be turned over: The court sent the case back to the trial court and agreed that the president could still argue that complying with this subpoena would interfere with his ability to do his job. The upshot of today’s decisions is that the disputes are likely to continue in the lower courts for some time; even if the House of Representatives and the New York prosecutor ultimately prevail, neither Congress nor the New York grand jury will have access to the documents anytime soon.

The dispute at the heart of Trump v. Mazars began in April 2019, when three different committees of the House of Representatives issued subpoenas for the president’s financial records. Explaining that it wanted the records as part of an investigation into the adequacy of current government ethics laws, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sought documents from Mazars, the president’s longtime accountant. The second case, Trump v. Deutsche Bank (argued and decided together with Mazars), arose after the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capitol One seeking records relating to the president, his family and the Trump Organization as part of an investigation into possible foreign influence in U.S. elections…”

• See also The Atlantic – Trump Is Successfully Running Out the Clock – From his financial disclosures to his tax returns to impeachment, the president is finding that stonewalling pays off.
• See also The New York Times – Don’t Be Fooled, Trump Is a Winner in the Supreme Court Tax Case. His taxes will probably not become public before the election. And that is what he most cares about. By Josh Chafetz, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.