I won't regale you with the history of the Emoluments Clauses litigation. (You can see all the briefs that Seth Barrett Tillman and I filed here.) Needless to say, there were extensive debates about the meaning of the Domestic Emoluments Clause and the Foreign Emoluments Clause. And, because the litigation stretched beyond Trump's four-year term, the Supreme Court was never called upon to decide any of these issues. To the contrary, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment of the Fourth Circuit. And, in turn, the Fourth Circuit vacated the leading district court decision that interpreted the Emoluments Clause. The D.C. Circuit never resolved the merits of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, because a panel found that Senator Blumenthal and other members of the Congress lacked standing. And that case did not raise any claims based on the Domestic Emoluments Clause.
Fast-forward to July 8, 2020. Two judges on the D.C. Circuit-Chief Judge Srinivasan and Judge Rogers--decided Trump v. Mazars. (The third member of the panel, then-Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, heard oral argument in December 2021, but did not participate in the case.) This case may sound familiar. After the Supreme Court decided Trump v. Mazars in June 2020, the case went back to the District Court, and that dispute was appealed to the D.C. Circuit. Here, the panel allowed the Committee to "subpoena certain of President Trump's financial records in furtherance of the Committee's enumerated legislative purposes." But other requests were deemed too broad.
In passing on the Committee's "legislative purpose," Srinivasan's opinion made two claims about the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clause. These statements are problematic.
