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By Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall 

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court paved the way for a New York prosecutor to enforce a subpoena for President Trump's financial and tax records, but issued a mixed decision in a related case involving subpoenas from Congress.

The decisions -- both on 7-2 votes on Thursday -- send the cases back to lower courts, where Mr. Trump can raise additional objections to the subpoenas. The rulings put off, likely until after the November election, the attempts to explore Mr. Trump's finances, but also accelerate a criminal investigation into hush-money payments to women who claim to have had affairs with Mr. Trump because New York prosecutors now can move forward without waiting for the president to leave office.

In the New York case, the court rejected Mr. Trump's overarching claim that as president, he enjoys absolute immunity from the disclosure of information sought by prosecutors.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts recalled the trial of Aaron Burr for treason, when Chief Justice John Marshall ordered President Jefferson to turn over evidence the former vice president sought in his defense.

"Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. "We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need."

"Beginning with Jefferson and carrying on through Clinton, Presidents have uniformly testified or produced documents in criminal proceedings when called upon," he wrote.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. had issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump's accounting firm, seeking years of Trump financial documents and tax records as part of his probe. Whether those documents at some point become public will likely depend on lower courts siding with Mr. Vance as Mr. Trump mounts further challenges -- and on whether prosecutors ultimately choose to bring a case against the president or any of his associates.

The rulings will, however, mean that Congress won't receive soon a trove of documents it had sought as part of its own investigations, pushing the prospect that lawmakers, and perhaps the public, would see the president's financial disclosures past the Nov. 3 general election.

In the congressional case, Chief Justice Roberts, again writing for the court, said the lower courts were too quick to side with three House committees seeking records from the president's accountants and bankers, rebuffing House arguments about the scope of its subpoena power and finding that it failed to recognize the prerogatives of the executive branch. The court laid out its own criteria for considering congressional subpoenas involving the president -- and sent the case back to lower courts for further review.

The court's liberal members and both of Mr. Trump's appointees were in the majority. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

"This is all a political prosecution," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. "I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!"

The president added in a separate tweet that he felt he wasn't being treated fairly. "Courts in the past have given "broad deference." BUT NOT ME!" he wrote.

But Mr. Trump's lawyer, Jay Sekulow, had a different reaction to the news.

"We are pleased that in the decisions issued today, the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked both Congress and New York prosecutors from obtaining the President's financial records," he said in a statement. "We will now proceed to raise additional Constitutional and legal issues in the lower courts."

Mr. Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, said: "This is a tremendous victory for our nation's system of justice and its founding principle that no one -- not even a president -- is above the law." His statement further said, "Our investigation, which was delayed for almost a year by this lawsuit, will resume, guided as always by the grand jury's solemn obligation to follow the law and the facts, wherever they may lead."

The Supreme Court gave Mr. Vance nearly all he asked for: the right to enforce subpoenas against the president in state court, subject to the objections any individual could raise against a criminal inquiry.

That the Trump subpoena came from state rather than federal authorities ultimately made little difference, Chief Justice Roberts said, going on to dismiss each of the president's arguments one by one.

There was minimal risk the records request would distract Mr. Trump from his official duties, the chief justice said, certainly no more than prior presidents faced in prior cases. Mr. Trump's fear that "the stigma of being subpoenaed will undermine his leadership at home and abroad" likewise failed to register, the chief justice wrote, as "there is nothing inherently stigmatizing" about complying with the same legal duty any citizen had to cooperate with the courts.

"And, while we cannot ignore the possibility that state prosecutors may have political motivations" to harass the president, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, the White House in such cases could seek protection in federal court.

In the congressional case, the House Oversight Committee, investigating ethics issues in the executive branch, issued a subpoena to accounting firm Mazars USA LLP for eight years of financial records related to Mr. Trump, his real-estate company, his foundation and other entities belonging to the president.

A pair of other House committees -- the Financial Services and Intelligence Committees -- issued subpoenas seeking a range of Trump records from Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp.

Deutsche Bank since 1998 has led or participated in loans of at least $2.5 billion to companies affiliated with Mr. Trump.

The Intelligence Committee said it needed the information as part of its probe of foreign influence in the U.S. political process, including whether foreigners have financial leverage over the Trump family and its enterprises. The Financial Services Committee is investigating bank-lending practices, including to Mr. Trump and his businesses.

Mr. Trump argued that House committees infringed on his prerogatives as chief executive.

The Supreme Court made clear it was dissatisfied with both the president's legal arguments, as well as those of House Democrats who want his financial records.

Chief Justice Roberts first dispatched with Mr. Trump's claim that Congress should have to meet the highest of standards for seeking the president's personal papers. That approach "would risk seriously impeding Congress in carrying out its responsibilities," the chief wrote.

But he and the court were even more critical of Congress's arguments that the subpoenas for Mr. Trump's records were well within the House's traditional authority because lawmakers had a legislative purpose for seeking the information. That argument leaves "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," Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

Without some limits on the powers of Congress, it "could 'exert an imperious controul' over the Executive Branch and aggrandize itself at the President's expense, just as the Framers feared," the chief justice wrote, quoting Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers.

The court set out its own new legal standards, saying judges need to balance the competing interests of both branches of government. The new rules, however, will add some burdens on Congress. Lawmakers must do more to adequately identify their aims, the court said, and explain "why the President's information will advance its consideration of the possible legislation."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said after the rulings that the House would continue its press in lower courts to obtain Mr. Trump's financial records as part of its oversight of the executive branch.

"The path that the Supreme Court has laid out is one that is clearly achievable by us in the lower court and we will continue to go down that path," she said.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, one of the committees that had sought the documents, said the court's decision "will serve to delay the committee's investigation -- and, given the risk of foreign influence over this President, such delay is dangerous -- but we remain confident that we will ultimately prevail. And in light of the President's tweets this morning, he appears to believe the same."

On Twitter, former Vice President Joe Biden, the president's presumptive Democratic challenger, pointed to an October 2019 video of him calling on Mr. Trump to " release your tax returns or shut up."

The president has been fighting the release of his tax and financial documents since his presidential campaign, when he became the first presidential candidate in four decades not to release his tax returns.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump promised to release his tax returns following the completion of an audit, but he never followed through on that promise. Polls show the majority of the public believe he should release his tax returns.

Mr. Trump's niece, Mary L. Trump, wrote in a memoir set to be released next week -- a copy of which was reviewed by the Journal -- that she leaked critical financial documents about the Trump family to the New York Times in 2017 in an effort to damage the president.

In 1974, the Supreme Court required President Nixon to obey a subpoena for tapes and other records related to the Watergate investigation. In 1997, the court likewise ordered President Clinton to comply with a private lawsuit brought against him over sexual harassment allegations.

Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin@wsj.com and Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 09, 2020 17:05 ET (21:05 GMT)

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