A federal judge has ordered former President Donald Trump’s accountants to turn over two years of tax and bank records to a Congressional committee investigating Trump organizations.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued subpoenas -- approved Wednesday -- demanding the former president’s records dating back to 2011, but the judge’s order only applies to 2017 and 2018 records.
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The judge said the committee’s desire to get financial records before Trump’s term in office was unwarranted and encroached on presidential powers.
“Due to its broad, invasive nature, the subpoena poses an appreciable risk to the separation of powers,” said U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta. “In the current polarized political climate, it is not difficult to imagine the incentives a Congress would have to threaten or influence a sitting President with a similarly robust subpoena, issued after he leaves office, in order to ‘aggrandize itself at the President’s expense....’”
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Judge Mehta, however, did agree the committee needed access to some of Trump’s data to assess any violations of the Constitutional emoluments clause.
“By freely contracting with GSA for his own private economic gain, and by not divesting upon taking office, President Trump opened himself up to potential scrutiny from the very Committee whose jurisdiction includes the ‘management of government operations and activities, including Federal procurement,” Mehta elaborated. “That he happened to occupy the presidency for some portion of his still-in-effect lease does nothing to change that fact.”
What the judge approved for the House committee to receive is only a fraction of what the district attorney for the southern district of New York already has. But unlike Manhattan prosecutors, Congressional lawmakers could make the information public.
Trump’s lawyers can appeal.
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