For the second time in a year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently upheld a 2019 grand jury subpoena duces tecum served on President Donald J. Trump’s accounting firm for his financial and tax records. In an Oct. 7, per curiam decision, circuit Judges Robert Katzmann, Pierre Leval and Raymond Lohier Jr. affirmed the District Attorney for New York County’s (the Manhattan DA) motion to dismiss the president’s Second Amended Complaint (the SAC) to block enforcement of the subpoena, concluding that the subpoena was neither overbroad nor issued in bad faith. In so limiting its review to well-established doctrines, the Second Circuit affirmed in dicta that though a sitting President may be entitled to unique subpoena-specific constitutional challenges, any complaint seeking to quash a grand jury subpoena is required to include well-plead facts sufficient to rebut the presumption of validity.

On Oct. 13, the president filed an emergency application for a stay in the U.S. Supreme Court, pending the filing and disposition of a petition for writ of certiorari, which he requested also be treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari. At the time of the publication of this article, the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the application.