The high court agreed on Monday to hear a case on a 2017 attempt by seven Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee to obtain documents related to Trump’s deal to lease the Old Post Office Building in Washington, DC, and open a luxury hotel bearing his name.
However, according to the Biden administration and the Trump administration before it, that’s not really how it works. Biden has similarly refused to cooperate with requests for documents from GOP lawmakers in the minority.
In Trump’s time, the government simply refused to cooperate with the requests, even after a federal appeals court ruled 2-1 in 2020 to support use of the “Seven Member Rule.” Biden’s Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar has told the high court to stay out of the issue.
The actual reasons for the Democrats requesting such information are unclear, but seem to be related to a belief that Trump hid a significant amount of debt from the General Services Administration when bidding for the Old Post Office Pavilion lease.
A parallel investigation is based on potential conflicts of interest while Trump was president, since delegations from foreign governments with which his administration was doing business also stayed at the hotel during their visits to Washington, DC.
The Trump Organization, which Trump set up to handle his business affairs while he was president, sold the property for $375 million in May 2022, which has since reopened as a Waldorf-Astoria.