SUPREME COURT OF
THE UNITED STATES DONALD J.
TRUMP, et al., PETITIONERS v.
MAZARS USA, LLP, et al. [July 9, 2020] Chief Justice
Roberts
delivered the opinion of the Court. Over the course of five days in April
2019, three committees
of the U. S. House of Representatives issued four
subpoenas seeking information
about the finances of President Donald J. Trump, his
children, and affiliated
businesses. We have held that the House has authority
under the Constitution to
issue subpoenas to assist it in carrying out its
legislative responsibilities.
The House asserts that the financial information sought
here—encompassing a
decade’s worth of transactions by the President and his
family—will help guide
legislative reform in areas ranging from money
laundering and terrorism to
foreign involvement in U. S. elections. The President
contends that the House
lacked a valid legislative aim and instead sought these
records to harass him,
expose personal matters, and conduct law enforcement
activities beyond its
authority. The question presented is whether the
subpoenas exceed the authority
of the House under the Constitution. We have never addressed a
congressional subpoena for the
President’s information. Two hundred years ago, it was
established that
Presidents may be subpoenaed during a federal criminal
proceeding, United
States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 30 (No. 14,692d) (CC Va.
1807) (Marshall, Cir. J.),
and earlier today we extended that ruling to state
criminal proceedings, Trump
v. Vance. Nearly
fifty years ago, we
held that a federal prosecutor could obtain information
from a President
despite assertions of executive privilege, United States
v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683
(1974), and more recently we ruled that a private
litigant could subject a
President to a damages suit and appropriate discovery
obligations in federal
court, Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997). This case is different. Here the
President’s information is
sought not by prosecutors or private parties in
connection with a particular
judicial proceeding, but by committees of Congress that
have set forth broad
legislative objectives. Congress and the President—the
two political branches
established by the Constitution—have an ongoing
relationship that the Framers
intended to feature both rivalry and reciprocity. That
distinctive aspect
necessarily informs our analysis of the question before
us. I A Each of the three committees sought
overlapping sets of
financial documents, but each supplied different
justifications for the
requests. The House Committee on Financial
Services issued two
subpoenas, both on April 11, 2019. The first, issued to
Deutsche Bank, seeks
the financial information of the President, his
children, their immediate
family members, and several affiliated business
entities. . . . On the same day as the Financial
Services Committee, the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued an
identical subpoena to
Deutsche Bank—albeit for different reasons. According to
the House, the
Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Deutsche Bank as part
of an investigation
into foreign efforts to undermine the U. S. political
process. Committee
Chairman Adam Schiff had described that investigation in
a previous statement,
explaining that the Committee was examining alleged
attempts by Russia to
influence the 2016 election; potential links between
Russia and the President’s
campaign; and whether the President and his associates
had been compromised by
foreign actors or interests. . . . Four days after the Financial
Services and Intelligence
Committees, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform
issued another
subpoena, this time to the President’s personal
accounting firm, Mazars USA,
LLP. The subpoena demanded information related to the
President and several
affiliated business entities from 2011 through 2018 . .
. B Petitioners—the President in his
personal capacity, along
with his children and affiliated businesses—filed two
suits challenging the
subpoenas. . . . We granted certiorari in both cases
and stayed the judgments
below pending our decision . . . . II A The question presented is whether the
subpoenas exceed the
authority of the House under the Constitution.
Historically, disputes over
congressional demands for presidential documents have
not ended up in court.
Instead, they have been hashed out in the “hurly-burly,
the give-and-take of
the political process between the legislative and the
executive.” That practice began with George
Washington and the early
Congress. In 1792, a House committee requested Executive
Branch documents
pertaining to General St. Clair’s campaign against the
Indians in the Northwest
Territory, which had concluded in an utter rout of
federal forces when they
were caught by surprise near the present-day border
between Ohio and Indiana.
Since this was the first such request from Congress,
President Washington
called a Cabinet meeting, wishing to take care that his
response “be rightly
conducted” because it could “become a precedent.” The meeting, attended by the likes of
Alexander Hamilton,
Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, and Henry Knox, ended
with the Cabinet of
“one mind”: The House had authority to “institute
inquiries” and “call for
papers” but the President could “exercise a discretion”
over disclosures,
“communicating such papers as the public good would
permit” and “refusing” the
rest. President Washington then dispatched Jefferson to
speak to individual
congressmen and “bring them by persuasion into the right
channel.” The
discussions were apparently fruitful, as the House later
narrowed its request
and the documents were supplied without recourse to the
courts. Jefferson, once he became President,
followed Washington’s
precedent. In early 1807, after Jefferson had disclosed
that “sundry persons”
were conspiring to invade Spanish territory in North
America with a private
army, the House requested that the President produce any
information in his
possession touching on the conspiracy (except for
information that would harm
the public interest). Jefferson chose not to divulge the
entire “voluminous”
correspondence on the subject, explaining that much of
it was “private” or mere
“rumors” and “neither safety nor justice” permitted him
to “expos[e] names”
apart from identifying the conspiracy’s “principal
actor”: Aaron Burr. Instead
of the entire correspondence, Jefferson sent Congress
particular documents and
a special message summarizing the conspiracy. Neither
Congress nor the
President asked the Judiciary to intervene. Ever since, congressional demands for
the President’s
information have been resolved by the political branches
without involving this
Court . . . B Congress has no enumerated
constitutional power to conduct
investigations or issue subpoenas, but we have held that
each House has power
“to secure needed information” in order to legislate.
This “power of
inquiry—with process to enforce it—is an essential and
appropriate auxiliary to
the legislative function.” Without information, Congress
would be shooting in
the dark, unable to legislate “wisely or effectively.”
The congressional power
to obtain information is “broad” and “indispensable.” It
encompasses inquiries
into the administration of existing laws, studies of
proposed laws, and
“surveys of defects in our social, economic or political
system for the purpose
of enabling the Congress to remedy them.” Because this power is “justified
solely as an adjunct to the
legislative process,” it is subject to several
limitations. Most importantly, a
congressional subpoena is valid only if it is “related
to, and in furtherance
of, a legitimate task of the Congress.” The subpoena
must serve a “valid
legislative purpose”; it must “concern a subject on
which legislation ‘could be
had.’” Furthermore, Congress may not issue a
subpoena for the
purpose of “law enforcement,” because “those powers are
assigned under our
Constitution to the Executive and the Judiciary.”
Congress has no “‘general’
power to inquire into private affairs and compel
disclosures,” and “there is no
congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure.”
“Investigations
conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the
investigators or to
‘punish’ those investigated are indefensible.” Finally, recipients of legislative
subpoenas retain their
constitutional rights throughout the course of an
investigation. And recipients
have long been understood to retain common law and
constitutional privileges
with respect to certain materials, such as
attorney-client communications and
governmental communications protected by executive
privilege. C The President contends, as does the
Solicitor General
appearing on behalf of the United States, that the usual
rules for
congressional subpoenas do not govern here because the
President’s papers are
at issue. They argue for a more demanding standard based
in large part on cases
involving the Nixon tapes—recordings of conversations
between President Nixon
and close advisers discussing the break-in at the
Democratic National
Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex. The
tapes were subpoenaed by
a Senate committee and the Special Prosecutor
investigating the break-in, prompting
President Nixon to invoke executive privilege and
leading to two cases
addressing the showing necessary to require the
President to comply with the
subpoenas. Those cases, the President and the
Solicitor General now
contend, establish the standard that should govern the
House subpoenas here.
Quoting Nixon, the President asserts that the House must
establish a
“demonstrated, specific need” for the financial
information, just as the
Watergate special prosecutor was required to do in order
to obtain the tapes.
And drawing on Senate Select Committee—the D. C. Circuit
case refusing to
enforce the Senate subpoena for the tapes—the President
and the Solicitor
General argue that the House must show that the
financial information is
“demonstrably critical” to its legislative purpose. We disagree that these demanding
standards apply here.
Unlike the cases before us, Nixon and Senate Select
Committee involved Oval
Office communications over which the President asserted
executive privilege.
That privilege safeguards the public interest in candid,
confidential
deliberations within the Executive Branch; it is
“fundamental to the operation
of Government.” As a result, information subject to
executive privilege
deserves “the greatest protection consistent with the
fair administration of
justice.” We decline to transplant that protection root
and branch to cases
involving non-privileged, private information, which by
definition does not
implicate sensitive Executive Branch deliberations. The standards proposed by the
President and the Solicitor
General—if applied outside the context of privileged
information—would risk
seriously impeding Congress in carrying out its
responsibilities. . . .
Confounding the legislature in that effort
would be contrary to the principle that: “It is the proper duty of a
representative body to look
diligently into every affair of government and to talk
much about what it sees.
It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody
the wisdom and will of
its constituents. Unless Congress have and use every
means of acquainting
itself with the acts and the disposition of the
administrative agents of the
government, the country must be helpless to learn how it
is being served.” Legislative inquiries might involve
the President in
appropriate cases; as noted, Congress’s responsibilities
extend to “every
affair of government.” Because the President’s approach
does not take adequate
account of these significant congressional interests, we
do not adopt it. D The House meanwhile would have us
ignore that these suits
involve the President. Invoking our precedents
concerning investigations that
did not target the President’s papers, the House urges
us to uphold its
subpoenas because they “relate to a valid legislative
purpose” or “concern a
subject on which legislation could be had.” That
approach is appropriate, the
House argues, because the cases before us are not
“momentous
separation-of-powers disputes.” Largely following the House’s lead,
the courts below treated
these cases much like any other, applying precedents
that do not involve the
President’s papers. . . . The House’s approach fails to take
adequate account of the
significant separation of powers issues raised by
congressional subpoenas for
the President’s information. Congress and the President
have an ongoing
institutional relationship as the “opposite and rival”
political branches
established by the Constitution . . .Congressional
subpoenas for the
President’s information unavoidably pit the political
branches against one
another. Far from accounting for separation of
powers concerns, the
House’s approach aggravates them by leaving essentially
no limits on the
congressional power to subpoena the President’s personal
records. Any personal
paper possessed by a President could potentially “relate
to” a conceivable
subject of legislation, for Congress has broad
legislative powers that touch a
vast number of subjects. The President’s financial
records could relate to
economic reform, medical records to health reform,
school transcripts to education
reform, and so on. Indeed, at argument, the House was
unable to identify any
type of information that lacks some relation to
potential legislation. Without limits on its subpoena
powers, Congress could “exert
an imperious control” over the Executive Branch and
aggrandize itself at the
President’s expense, just as the Framers feared. And a
limitless subpoena power
would transform the “established practice” of the
political branches. Instead
of negotiating over information requests, Congress could
simply walk away from
the bargaining table and compel compliance in court. The House and the courts below
suggest that these separation
of powers concerns are not fully implicated by the
particular subpoenas here,
but we disagree. We would have to be “blind” not to see
what “[a]ll others can
see and understand”: that the subpoenas do not represent
a run-of-the-mill
legislative effort but rather a clash between rival
branches of government over
records of intense political interest for all involved.
The interbranch conflict here does
not vanish simply because
the subpoenas seek personal papers or because the
President sued in his
personal capacity. The President is the only person who
alone composes a branch
of government. As a result, there is not always a clear
line between his
personal and official affairs. “The interest of the man”
is often “connected
with the constitutional rights of the place.” In fact, a subpoena for personal
papers may pose a
heightened risk of such impermissible purposes,
precisely because of the
documents’ personal nature and their less evident
connection to a legislative
task. No one can say that the controversy here is less
significant to the
relationship between the branches simply because it
involves personal papers.
Quite the opposite. That appears to be what makes the
matter of such great
consequence to the President and Congress. In addition, separation of powers
concerns are no less
palpable here simply because the subpoenas were issued
to third parties.
Congressional demands for the President’s information
present an interbranch
conflict no matter where the information is held—it is,
after all, the
President’s information. Were it otherwise, Congress
could sidestep
constitutional requirements any time a President’s
information is entrusted to
a third party—as occurs with rapidly increasing
frequency. E Congressional subpoenas for the
President’s personal
information implicate weighty concerns regarding the
separation of powers.
Neither side, however, identifies an approach that
accounts for these concerns.
For more than two centuries, the political branches have
resolved information
disputes using the wide variety of means that the
Constitution puts at their
disposal. The nature of such interactions would be
transformed by judicial
enforcement of either of the approaches suggested by the
parties, eroding a
“[d]eeply embedded traditional way[ ] of conducting
government.” A balanced approach is necessary, one
that takes a
“considerable impression” from “the practice of the
government,” and
“resist[s]” the “pressure inherent within each of the
separate Branches to
exceed the outer limits of its power.” Courts must
perform a careful analysis
that takes adequate account of the separation of powers
principles at stake,
including both the significant legislative interests of
Congress and the
“unique position” of the President. Several special
considerations inform this
analysis. First, courts should carefully assess
whether the asserted
legislative purpose warrants the significant step of
involving the President
and his papers.“ ‘[O]ccasion[s] for constitutional
confrontation between the
two branches’ should be avoided whenever possible.”
Congress may not rely on
the President’s information if other sources could
reasonably provide Congress
the information it needs in light of its particular
legislative objective. The
President’s unique constitutional position means that
Congress may not look to
him as a “case study” for general legislation. . . . Second, to narrow the scope of
possible conflict between the
branches, courts should insist on a subpoena no broader
than reasonably
necessary to support Congress’s legislative objective.
The specificity of the
subpoena’s request “serves as an important safeguard
against unnecessary
intrusion into the operation of the Office of the
President.” Third, courts should be attentive to
the nature of the
evidence offered by Congress to establish that a
subpoena advances a valid
legislative purpose. The more detailed and substantial
the evidence of Congress’s
legislative purpose, the better. That is particularly
true when Congress
contemplates legislation that raises sensitive
constitutional issues, such as
legislation concerning the Presidency. In such cases, it
is “impossible” to
conclude that a subpoena is designed to advance a valid
legislative purpose
unless Congress adequately identifies its aims and
explains why the President’s
information will advance its consideration of the
possible legislation. Fourth, courts should be careful to
assess the burdens
imposed on the President by a subpoena. We have held
that burdens on the
President’s time and attention stemming from judicial
process and litigation,
without more, generally do not cross constitutional
lines. But burdens imposed
by a congressional subpoena should be carefully
scrutinized, for they stem from
a rival political branch that has an ongoing
relationship with the President
and incentives to use subpoenas for institutional
advantage. Other considerations may be pertinent
as well; one case
every two centuries does not afford enough experience
for an exhaustive list. When Congress seeks information
“needed for intelligent
legislative action,” it “unquestionably” remains “the
duty of all citizens to
cooperate.” Congressional subpoenas for information from
the President,
however, implicate special concerns regarding the
separation of powers. The
courts below did not take adequate account of those
concerns. The judgments of
the Courts of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit and the
Second Circuit are vacated,
and the cases are remanded for further proceedings
consistent with this
opinion. It is so ordered. |