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Page Number: 35.0

10 

TRUMP v. MAZARS USA, LLP 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

not.”  8 Cong. Deb. 2160, 2164.  The House gave the Com-
mittee “power to send for persons and papers.”  Id., at 2160. 
The power to inspect the books of the Bank of the United 
States is not itself a clear example of a legislative subpoena
for private, nonofficial documents, because the Bank was a 
federally chartered corporation and was required to allow 
Congress  to  inspect  its  books.  App.  to  8  Cong.  Deb.  54
(1833).  The  investigation  itself  appears  to  have  ranged
more widely, however, leading Congressman John Quincy 
Adams to criticize 

“investigations  which  must  necessarily  implicate  not 
only the president and directors of the bank, and their 
proceedings, but the rights, the interests, the fortunes,
and  the  reputation  of  individuals  not  responsible  for
those  proceedings,  and  whom  neither  the  committee
nor the House had the power to try, or even accuse be-
fore any other tribunal.”  Ibid. 

Adams continued that such an investigation “bears all the
exceptionable  and  odious  properties  of  general  warrants 
and  domiciliary  visits.”  Ibid.    He  also  objected  that  the  
Committee’s investigation of the Bank was tantamount to
punishment and thus was in tension with the constitutional 
prohibitions  on  “passing  any  bill  of  attainder  [or]  ex  post 
facto law.”  Id., at 60.  Thus, even when Congress author-
ized a Committee to send for private papers, the constitu-
tionality of doing so was questioned.

An 1859 Senate investigation, which the Court of Appeals 
cited as precedent, underscores that legislative subpoenas
to private parties were a 19th-century innovation.  Follow-
ing abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, Sen-
ate  Democrats  opened  an  investigation  apparently  de-
signed  to  embarrass  opponents  of  slavery.    As  part  of  the
investigation,  they  called  private  individuals  to  testify. 
Senator  Charles  Sumner,  a  leading  opponent  of  slavery,
railed against the proceedings: