[gitmo]

The person being subpoened isn't a sovereign, he is a US citizen. It seems no different from a subpoena issued to an employee or contractor to divulge private information about their employer. The employer may have a confidentiality agreement with the employee, but the Congress (or the courts) can overrule that in a criminal investigation.

The US has been defrauded, and is entitled to an investigation.

[Wuli]

You are right that the subpoena was to Mr. Parton, not the U.N., which is why the subpoena power is not the issue. The U.S. did not subpoena the documents (U.N. property) Mr. Parton took with him, they subpeona'd Mr. Parton. The U.N. court filing is not against the U.S. congress directly, it is against Mr. Parton. It asks that their property, which he was contracturally bound to not give to anyone, be returned to them, because of their contract. Is that contract enforceable, that is the legal question, not the soverignty of anyone - the U.S. or the U.N. That is made clear in that the U.S. congress asked, but could not require, such documents from the U.N. to begin with. Quit thinking some big conspiracy and in place of the U.N. just call it "the British Embassy"; same difference in this case. Fraud, involving international circumstances, other "soverigns" and actions within the jurisdictions of those "soverigns" will always require international legal conventions in the proceedings, no matter what is the jurisdiction in which those proceedings occur. This is not a LEGAL PRECEDENT setting case.