WASHINGTON _ Lawyers for Donald Trump, in court Friday morning to keep the president's financial records out of Congress' hands, faced skeptical questioning.
The hearing, before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, is over a subpoena from congressional Democrats seeking financial information from Trump's longtime accountants, Mazars USA LLP.
"Congress has to have a legislative purpose that's constitutional," Trump's lawyer William Consovoy told U.S. Circuit Judges David Tatel and Patricia Millett, appointed by Democratic presidents, and one judge appointed by Trump, Neomi Rao. Instead, he said, "they want to investigate the president. They want to see if something illegal was done."
Tatel, named to the appellate bench by President Bill Clinton, probed that argument.
"What's the principle to apply to say this is just a ruse?" he asked.
The House Oversight Committee argues it needs the records to explore possible conflicts of interest in the executive branch, violations of the Constitution's emoluments clauses and other matters.
In the Mazars case _ one of three testing the power of Congress to compel production of a sitting president's financial records in the name of oversight _ Trump is asking the court to reverse a ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta. Mehta rejected arguments that the lawmakers lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for seeking the president's records and that in so doing they were encroaching on executive branch power by impermissibly engaging in law enforcement.
The case could have a wide-ranging impact on the relationship between the executive and legislative branches.
"We are talking about rulings that could have significant constitutional implications going forward for the balance of powers," George Washington University historian Matt Dallek said in an interview. "The larger question," he said, is do the rulings reduce Congress to "a second-rate branch."
Lawmakers exercised oversight authority during the Watergate and Whitewater probes, experts said.
Trump could wind up with a ruling reaffirming congressional power rather than reducing it, added Steven Schwinn, who teaches at Chicago's John Marshall Law School. "My guess is that the Supreme Court won't want to touch this," because the law is settled.
Mazars has taken no position in the dispute.
A New York-based federal appeals court next month will hear a similar case _ Trump's appeal of a ruling giving the House Financial Services Committee permission to examine records held by Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp.
Another Democratic-controlled House committee, Ways and Means, filed a lawsuit on July 2 asking a Washington federal court to force the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service to hand over the president's tax returns for the past six years.
