WASHINGTON: US President Trump on Monday filed suit to keep US lawmakers from obtaining his financial records, the first salvo in what promises to be an escalating legal battle with Democrats in Congress.
The suit seeks to block a subpoena issued by the Democratic chairman of the US House Oversight Committee for information about Trump’s personal and business finances, alleging Democrats have launched “all-out political war” on Trump with subpoenas as their “weapon of choice”. The committee’s subpoena sought eight years of documents from Mazars USA, an accounting firm used by Trump to prepare financial statements, related to its probe of allegations Trump inflated or deflated financial statements for potentially improper purposes.
Elijah Cummings, the House Oversight Committee chairman, subpoenaed the president’s accountant after Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified to Congress in February that Trump had misrepresented his net worth.
“Chairman Cummings’ subpoena is invalid and unenforceable because it has no legitimate legislative purpose,” Trump’s lawyers said in a filing, arguing it exceeded constitutional limits on the power of Congress to investigate. “Its goal is to expose Plaintiffs’ private financial information for the sake of exposure, with the hope that it will turn up something that Democrats can use as a political tool against the President,” they said.
Cummings said on Monday there was no valid legal basis to try to block the subpoena and accused the White House of “unprecedented stonewalling” in refusing to produce a single document or witness to the committee.
The filing was the first effort by Trump’s legal team to quash multiple investigations of Trump and his finances by Democratic-led committees in Congress.