WASHINGTON (CN) — Supreme Court arguments stretched for more than three hours Tuesday with few hints from the justices on how they will resolve multiple subpoenas over President Donald Trump's financial records.
In one showcase of the court’s concern for how their ruling could alter the way the separate branches of government interact, Justice Elena Kagan made a pointed comment early on while questioning Trump’s lawyer.
"What it seems to me you're asking us to do is to put a kind of 10-ton weight on the scales between the president and Congress and essentially to make it impossible for Congress to perform oversight and to carry out its functions where the president is concerned," Justice Elena Kagan said.
Chief Justice John Roberts meanwhile stressed caution about tipping the balance in the other direction, giving Congress too much power so long as a subpoena could lead to some undefined legislation in the future.
"That's what I'm suggesting, that your test is really not much of a test, it's not a limitation," Chief Justice John Roberts said to an attorney for House Democrats. "And it doesn't seem in any way to take account of the fact that we're talking about a coordinate branch of government — the executive branch."
Seen as a potential swing vote in the cases, Roberts also tested the position of an attorney for the Justice Department.
"Should a court be probing the mental processes of the legislators?" Roberts asked. "Should members of House committees be subject to cross-examination on why you are really seeking these documents?"
Many of the justices sought to unroot the arguments from the current administration, given the precedential effect of the eventual ruling.
"The fact that what I hold today will also apply to a future Senator McCarthy asking a future Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman exactly the same questions, that bothers me," Justice Stephen Breyer said, expressing concern about the burden subpoenas might impose on a president. "So what do I do?"
In addition to the House subpoena, the justices are studying a subpoena of Trump’s personal finances by New York’s top prosecutor. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked whether insulating Trump from a request in a criminal investigation would hold the president above the law.
"We have said in the grand jury context that the public has right to every man's evidence," Ginsburg said. "Is it your position that that is, save for the president?"
With mere months to go before the next presidential election, the cases represent perhaps the most politically charged and closely watched of the term, promising resolution of a fight four years in the making.
The New York subpoena was issued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance as part of an investigation into the hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who says she and Trump had an affair in 2006, when the future first lady was pregnant with the couple’s first child.
The Second Circuit upheld the subpoena of Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars, holding that presidential immunity does not extend to purely investigative measures like a grand jury subpoena.
Mazars was also subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee for eight years of financial and accounting records related to Trump and his businesses. Yet more subpoenas were brought against Deutsche Bank and Capital One by the House committees on Financial Services and Intelligence, seeking years of financial information related to Trump, his companies and members of his family.
The House Oversight Committee said its subpoenas are necessary as part of a potential updates to government ethics and conflict-of-interest law, while the other committees are probing money-laundering and unsafe-lending laws, as well as foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.