Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Monday argued that allowing Congress to subpoena his client’s financial records and revealing them "to the whole world" would give the legislative branch too much power over the president.
"The committee says it needs a detailed understanding and full accounting of President Trump's finances in order to legislate," attorney Cameron Norris said on Monday during a hearing before a three-judge panel concerning the subpoena, which was issued by the House Oversight Committee.
"No prior Congress has demanded this kind of information, but every future Congress will if this Court upholds the subpoena. There's no principled way to limit the fallout to President Trump."
"The more you let Congress do to a former president, the more leverage they have over a current president, because they can make this threat," Norris added, according to Bloomberg News.
Norris’ statement came after one of the judges pointed out that the House panel is attempting to ascertain if the process for reviewing incoming president’s potential conflicts of interest must be updated following the Trump Organization’s leasing of the Old Post Office, a government building in the capital that was then turned into a luxury hotel.
"The other part that worries me, in addition to the separation-of-powers concerns, is whether that's really consistent with the rule of law and the peaceful and full complete transfer of power," said Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, according to The Hill.
"That someone who used to be a private person becomes the president and returns to a private person is very fundamental in our constitutional system. And yet somehow now you say if a subpoena comes to him, in his post presidency, and the legislature establishes a reason for it ... we should still say that they can't get it from him," she said.
"And I'm trying to understand why that is, what makes him so different or special that he gets this kind of accommodation that other people in private life don't."
Norris said that court precedents state that former presidents still hold some powers after they leave the White House, and said that congressional "disputes with former presidents still do implicate the separation of powers."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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