U.S. Supreme Court building. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

President Donald Trump's attorneys late Thursday made their case that their lawsuit challenging a congressional subpoena for the president's financial records should be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a pair of filings to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Trump's private lawyers said the circuit court should grant an en banc rehearing of the case challenging the subpoena to the president's accounting firm Mazars. If not, they said, the court should issue a stay so the president can make his case to the Supreme Court.

"There is certainly a reasonable possibility that four Justices will vote to grant certiorari. And for the reasons outlined in Plaintiffs' rehearing petition, there is 'a fair prospect that a majority of the Court will conclude' that this Court's decision, in whole or in part, 'was erroneous,'" argued Trump's attorneys, including William Consovoy of Consovoy McCarthy and former White House lawyer Stefan Passantino of Michael Best & Friedrich.

The attorneys said they intend to raise at least three questions of constitutional law in their petition for writ of certiorari:

• Does a congressional subpoena pursue a permissible legislative purpose, rather than an impermissible law-enforcement purpose, when one of its explicitly stated goals is uncovering illegal conduct by the president?
• Because the presidency is a coequal office created by the Constitution itself, can Congress enact legislation that forces sitting presidents to disclose sensitive financial information to the public?
• Are the rules delegating the full House's subpoena power to committees exempt from the general principle that Congress must speak clearly when it wants to reach the president himself?

All signs have pointed to the case going to the Supreme Court. But this is the first time the president's lawyers have officially said they would file a petition with the justices.

How quickly the D.C. Circuit will decide on whether to grant an en banc hearing is unclear. But the time it takes the judges to reach the decision, compounded with how long it can take the Supreme Court to agree to hear and then decide on a case, could extend the timeline for a final resolution over the subpoena for months.

A three judge panel on the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 earlier this month to uphold the subpoena. Judge David Tatel wrote in the majority opinion that siding with Trump's arguments against disclosing his financial information "would be to return to an 'archaic view of the separation of powers' that 'requir[es] three airtight departments of government. That is not the law."

Judge Neomi Rao dissented, arguing the only way Congress could obtain information that may include information that could lead to impeachment proceedings is in the course of impeachment proceedings.

The House last week asked the circuit to speed up the timeline for Mazars to hand over the records "to ensure timely compliance with the Committee's valid subpoena, which was issued to further urgent investigations and inform critical legislative judgments."

But Trump's attorneys opposed that move in their filings Thursday, arguing it would deprive them of an opportunity to have the matter decided again by an en banc D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court.

They also took issue with the House, citing its recently started impeachment inquiry in its motion to expedite the issuance of the mandate. House attorneys said in last week's filing that "information received in response to the Mazars subpoena could be highly relevant to that [impeachment] inquiry as well."

But Trump's lawyers said that, because impeachment had not come up in the case while it was being argued, the House can't invoke it now.

"Given all this water over the dam, the Committee cannot now say it urgently needs Plaintiffs' records for impeachment—a purpose it expressly disclaimed, the parties did not brief, and this Court never accepted," they wrote.

It now appears likely that the Mazars case will be the first of Trump's legal fights with the House to get to the Supreme Court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is set to issue a ruling any day now over a similar congressional subpoena for Trump's financial records at Deutsche Bank and Capital One.

A pair of lawsuits over Trump's tax returns are also playing out in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The D.C. Circuit is also hearing an appeal of a lawsuit filed by the House against Trump over his diversion of military funds for a border wall, which was dismissed in district court earlier this year.