The Supreme Court wades into the battle over Donald Trump’s finances

ON DECEMBER 13TH, days before the House of Representatives is due to vote on the impeachment of President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court announced it would weigh in on Mr Trump’s quest to keep his business and tax records private. In late March or early April, the justices will hear a trio of cases—two involving the House of Representatives, one a prosecutor in New York—on subpoenas of Mr Trump’s financial documents from his banks and accounting firm. When the decisions in Trump v Mazars, Trump v Deutsche Bank and Trump v Vance arrive by the end of June, impeachment will be yesterday’s news. But the presidential race could be jolted by the sudden release of his long-suppressed financial details.

By historical standards, the court is moving quite fast, if not at the pace set when the special prosecutor in the Watergate investigations sought Richard Nixon’s Oval Office tapes in 1974. Then the Supreme Court held a three-hour oral argument 45 days after the appeal was filed, and just 16 days later the justices returned a 9-0 defeat for Nixon and his claim of “absolute privilege”. Sixteen days after that, the president resigned. This time the records are not directly salient to the impeachment articles. Yet the court has granted all three cases despite not having all the usual briefs in hand and has slotted the hearings into the first open dates on its calendar.