

President Donald Trump exits the NCGOP state convention on Jin Greenville, North Carolina. The Supreme Court will be Trump’s next stop if he is unable to get the immediate intervention he wants at the district or appellate level. After the appeals court panel weighs in, there are a couple of options for either side if they want to keep the battle at the appellate level. While the DC Circuit as a whole isn’t friendly territory for Trump, in the past he has drawn panel selections that have broken in his favor. If she declines the preliminary injunction request, Trump will then be relying on the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals, where a panel of three judges would be next to review the case. “She is a very efficient judge and I suspect will move on this very quickly,” Neil Eggleston, a former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, told CNN. His first stop will be Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama-appointee who was not involved in the major Trump oversight cases of the last administration. In this case, the Archives has indicated it plans to hand over the documents, so the onus is on Trump to get a court intervention to stop it. In that case, the House was suing to force Trump White House counsel Don McGahn to appear for testimony.

“The posture of this particular suits makes it possible that this could move much faster than say, like the McGahn litigation,” said Jonathan Shaub, a former attorney at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and now an assistant professor at University of Kentucky College of Law. Unlike some of the other litigation that surrounded Congress’ investigations into Trump while he was President, the burden is now on Trump to get a court order blocking the document release – and to get one quickly. How quickly the Supreme Court is put in the hot seat will depend on the lower courts’ handling of the case. It seems likely that Trump will again push the lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court if need be, where he will be met by a conservative 6-3 majority. January 6 committee approves Steve Bannon criminal contempt report, setting up key vote later this week While the Supreme Court rejected his most aggressive claims in that case, it punted in a way that has continued to stall Congress’ efforts to obtain the documents.

Mazars, the lawsuit that the then-President brought against his accounting firm to stop it from releasing his financial records to the House. The case bears some similarity to Trump v. Why Trump must act quickly if he wants drag things out “In some ways, it really works in President Trump’s favor, because there are so many questions that courts will have to address for the first time,” said Emily Berman, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center. At least some of the legal ground the lawsuit is seeking to explore is unsettled and could prompt courts to give the questions deliberate review. If Trump does secure a temporary court order – a request he’s likely to take to the Supreme Court if need be – blocking the November 12 release, the pace of the proceedings could slow down quite a bit. With Democrats in danger of losing control of Congress in next year’s midterms, if Trump can drag out the litigation long enough, it could be enough to sink their request for the documents, regardless of how the legal questions are ultimately settled.

Trump’s efforts to act quickly now to stop the release could ultimately turn into larger strategy to run down the clock, legal experts told CNN. Judge who's criticized Capitol insurrection to hear Trump's challenge to House subpoena of presidential records Judge Tanya Chutkan Shane McCoy/US Marshals
