WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a House request to expedite litigation over President Trump’s financial records, further dimming Democratic hopes that congressional investigators could obtain the materials prior to November’s election.
The unsigned order, issued Monday, provided no explanation. But the action underscored the court’s distinction between the House inquiry, which is intended to inform lawmakers’ oversight of banking, ethics and national security legislation, and a separate criminal investigation by New York state prosecutors that seeks many of the same records.
On Friday, the court granted a joint request filed by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and Mr. Trump to expedite the follow-up proceedings over the state subpoena to the president’s accounting firm, Mazars USA LLP.
Normally, Supreme Court decisions take effect 25 days after they are issued. Friday’s order, signed by Chief Justice John Roberts, set aside that period in the New York case; Monday’s order denied similar treatment for the House case. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she would have granted the House request.
Mr. Vance is investigating potential state crimes linked to hush-money payments made to two women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Mr. Trump. The president’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to federal crimes related to the payments, which charging documents said were intended to suppress information damaging to Mr. Trump’s political campaign. Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing, and his attorneys indicated they would raise additional arguments in federal district court in an attempt to quash the criminal inquiry.
Earlier this month, by a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court held that Mr. Trump had no constitutional immunity from the state criminal subpoena, nor could he require the district attorney to surmount extra hurdles to pursue his investigation. The decision left Mr. Trump largely in the same position as any individual seeking to end a grand jury investigation.
By the same vote, however, the court held that Congress must demonstrate particular reasons why it needs information from Mr. Trump’s own records to inform the legislative process. Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote both decisions, suggested that a criminal investigation into specific allegations of misconduct had greater need for the records and posed less of a threat of political motivation than a fact-finding inquiry from a coordinate branch of government.
In its motion, the House noted that the 116th Congress will expire on Jan. 3, 2021. The “window of opportunity to litigate the remands in these cases, then obtain and review the subpoenaed documents, evaluate their significance to potential or pending legislation, draft such legislation or amendments, and shepherd that legislation through the bicameral process diminishes by the day,” the chamber argued.
In response, Mr. Trump’s lawyers told the court there was no reason to expedite the process. “The Committees cannot identify any pending legislative proposal to which the President’s records are relevant—let alone urgently needed,” they wrote.
Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin@wsj.com
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