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.