The Internal Revenue Protection Act of 2019: The Case against Donald Trump, his Top Advisers, and the House of Representatives to the House
The IRS rejected the request – which came after Trump, as a presidential candidate, broke political norms by refusing to release his returns voluntarily – and the House filed a lawsuit to obtain them, starting the long and winding legal road that concluded last month, nearly two years after Trump left office and just weeks before Democrats are set to lose control of the House.
The lawyer who is going to lead the court fights is a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and a seasoned litigator, with experience at the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission.
Since 2019, Letter has squared off in court more than a dozen times against Trump, his top advisers and his administration, ultimately suing for access to Trump’s financial information, sensitive administration documents and testimony from some of his closest advisers.
“There were some very tense conversations,” one senior Democratic aide told CNN. “We felt like this very powerful oversight tool, if we lost, was gutted.”
In doing so, Letter enshrined key congressional oversight powers, bolstering Congress’ ability to pursue information and dismantling sweeping arguments aimed at shielding Trump from congressional scrutiny.
The approach kept the tax returns case on the backburner for years, while the House took other, more challenging cases seeking similar information through the courts.
Doug Letter, the Lawmaker, and the Senate: It Is Yours to Keep a Good Advocate, Not Mystified,” Commented Neal
“Not being an attorney, I scrupulously followed the advice of Doug Letter — who by the way, was not a TV lawyer. He’s argued four times in front of the Supreme Court, and he’s the one that counseled me repeatedly,” Neal said. I called him in Italy to find out when he would be back. That is how hard we pursued the merits of the case.
The end of the current Congress will cause Letter to leave his position and take a new job with Brady, the gun violence prevention nonprofit.
Before 2019, it was very unusual for the House to sue – and a risk. House general counsels have avoided testing congressional power with judges in recent years, since appeals that could set precedent have been done by the executive branch. The courts were believed to be able to cut back on congress’ power.
Instead, Congress and the executive branch mostly stuck to negotiations over subpoenas, which is formally known as the “accommodations process,” the historical norm.
Democrats took over the House of Representatives in the middle of the year and Trump immediately made clear he would not be going along with their subpoenas and lawsuits.
According to aides, it meant Letter was involved in everything from the initial letter to the final news releases that were issued. The committees’ actions – including providing extra “accommodations” that Democrats were sometimes frustrated by – were all taken with an eye toward future litigation.
“Doug’s function is to make sure that the only subpoenas that get issued are ones we are prepared to defend in court,” said a senior Democratic aide. “It became clear very quickly we were going to have to defend a lot of subpoenas in court, and so it was his job a lot of the time to say no.”
It was frustrating for Democrats when the court process was taking so long. One aide familiar with the discussion said that they could not say that Doug was holding up the process. “I think there was little bit of not understanding the political realities that members have and the pressures they get from the public. But that wasn’t his job.”
“There was a sense of, ‘this is the last bastion of democracy,’” said a former Justice Department official and close observer of the House’s work during Letter’s tenure.
The House took McGahn and his administration through multiple rounds of court before securing his testimony in a settlement after Biden took office. The litigation, where Letter personally argued several rounds, left a trail of mixed results for the House.
The House tried a different approach to enforce its subpoenas by looking to federal criminal prosecutors.
Several people who refused to testify or turn over documents during the select committee’s investigation were referred to the Justice Department for criminal contempt. Two of the witnesses were close to the former president and they weren’t charged with any crime.
Bannon was convicted at trial, sentenced to four months in jail, and is appealing – a consequential outcome that may sway other private citizens to try harder to accommodate congressional requests. The trial for Navarro is going to be held in January.
The battles over the reach of presidential secrecy continued after he left office, with the House prevailing over a Trump bid to block the January 6 committee from obtaining his presidential records from the National Archives.
The jury was persuaded to give the House access to email from John Eastman, a Trump elections attorney. The judge agreed with the accusations from the House that Trump and Eastman were involved in the planning of a crime. The House’s legal arguments were some of the boldest a congressional body has ever made in court and laid the foundation for the January 6 panel’s unprecedented criminal referrals of Trump. When the House committee released its final report last week, it recommended changing the law so the House could sue to enforce subpoenas – a weakness Letter’s years of work in court had made apparent.
Dave Rapallo, who is now a law professor, said that this period will be remembered as the most significant in history, not just because of the obstruction by the Trump administration, but also because the House committees were able to challenge that.
Republicans plan to launch a lot of investigations into Biden’s administration and his family if they take control of House committees. Many of those probes may benefit from the court decisions Letter won for congressional investigators.
“The Democrats sent out subpoenas like junk mail, and that’s why it’s hard to get people to come in,” Comer said. “I will be disciplined with subpoenas.”
“The Republican Congress is going to use every tactic and precedent set by the January 6 Committee,” said Robert Driscoll, a defense attorney in Washington who recently sued the House to block a subpoena.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/29/politics/house-democrats-lawyer-trump-taxes/index.html
Matthew Berry, the New House General Counsel, a Sen. Kevin McCarthy Evangelism, and a Source Near Investigating the Subpoena Case
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who’s fighting for the votes to become speaker in January, is still considering possible candidates for the job, according to a source close to congressional investigations, but that lawyer and their strategy likely won’t be secured until the speakership is settled.
Save for the election of the speaker himself, the source argued, the general counsel selection will be the most consequential choice for the new GOP conference.
Matthew Berry was named House general counsel by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“Matthew is a seasoned litigator and experienced counselor with over 25 years of public and private sector experience,” McCarthy, a California Republican, said in a statement Wednesday.
“Matthew brings the knowledge and skills necessary to restore the integrity of this institution and is the right choice to fill this vital role,” McCarthy said.
At the Office of Legal Counsel, Berry was able to advise the executive branch on some of the thorniest legal questions, as well as an office for policy initiatives of the Justice Department. Berry then spent more than a decade at the FCC, eventually serving as its general counsel and as chief of staff.
The House General Counsel works on legal briefs related to legislation passed by Congress as well as battles over subpoena enforcement and other issues, when there is a House investigation. The office advises individual lawmakers on legal questions that may arise as part of their legislative duties.