In granting summary judgement for the House Oversight Committee, the court rejected each of the President’s arguments. Third, the President argued that the Committee did not act with a specific legislative purpose, but that it was conducting “roving oversight” without any end goal in sight, and that the financial documents from Mazars could not be related to any legislative purpose. Second, the President argued that since the scope of the inquiry extended beyond Trump’s time as a candidate for office, the Committee’s requests had nothing to do with government oversight, but was merely “exposure for exposure’s sake” of the conduct of a private citizen, which the Supreme Court has held to be an invalid purpose for a Congressional inquiry. First, the President argued that by allegedly investigating into the accuracy of a private citizen’s financial statements, the Committee was not engaged in “legislative” activity, but was usurping the executive and judicial branches by acting as law enforcement. The Court sorted President Trump’s arguments for why the subpoenas were unconstitutional into three general categories. The requests sparked a litigation clash between the President and the Oversight Committee over the extent of the legislative branch’s authority to investigate. The Committee issued subpoenas to Mazars USA LLP, an accounting firm that provided services to the President, demanding access to several documents concerning the President himself and his affiliated organizations-the earliest of which was dated from 2011, well before Trump was even a presidential candidate. After the President’s former attorney Michael Cohen testified before Congress alleging that the President routinely altered his financial statements in order to understate or overstate his financial position depending on the situation, the House Oversight Committee launched a series of inquiries into the President’s personal finances. House of Representatives came about from Congress’s massive, ongoing investigation into President Trump, his campaign, and his staff. Committee on Oversight and Reform of the U.S. Finally, this article will examine whether the decision reflects a policy that will foster effective accountability between the President and Congress. legal tradition on legislative authority, analyzing whether the decision was correct. House of Representatives in context of U.S. This article will review the decision in Trump v. Nevertheless, the decision is important because it illustrates that, while the Supreme Court has paid lip service throughout its history to supposed limitations on Congress’s inquiry and oversight powers, these limitations are ultimately without real substance. The decision is far from controversial when viewed in context with the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on Congressional oversight and inquiry the Court has not struck down an exercise of the Congressional inquiry power on Constitutional grounds since 1880. The court held that the Committee had constitutional authority, through Congress’s implied power of inquiry, to request private financial statements of the President, including documents dated years prior to President Trump’s candidacy for president. District Court upheld the House of Representatives Oversight Committee’s power to conduct investigations pertinent to its legislative goals, even when those goals intersect with the President’s power. Capitol Building_15” by US Department of State is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0Ĭorey Bushle, Associate Member, University of Cincinnati Law Review
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