D.C. Circuit Panel Narrows House Committee Subpoena in Mazars Case
The D.C. Circuit ruled in Trump v. Mazars. Can the House Oversight Committee access former President Trump's financial records?
Published by The Lawfare Institute
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A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on July 8 unanimously narrowed a House Oversight Committee subpoena seeking personal financial records from Donald Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars.
The case goes back to 2019, when then-President Trump challenged the committee’s subpoena authority—which was confirmed by both the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the D.C. Circuit. But in 2020, a Supreme Court opinion vacated that decision and remanded the case, holding that congressional subpoenas of presidential records implicate special separation-of-powers issues that the D.C. Circuit had not considered, and articulating a four-part test (known as the Mazars test) for it to do so.
After applying the Mazars test, the D.C. Circuit ruled on July 8 that the committee’s subpoena was permissible but overbroad and in some cases insufficiently tied to a “valid legislative purpose.”
In a concurrence, Judge Rogers noted that the parties may seek rehearing of the case, “[g]iven the sensitive nature of the questions of first impression presented here.”
You can read the opinion here and below:
