By Ann Marimow, Renae Merle, The Washington Post, December 3, 2019
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit came in the ongoing legal battle Trump has waged to shield his private business records from disclosure — including in two cases that have already reached the Supreme Court.
The New York-based appeals court upheld Congress’s broad investigative authority and ordered Deutsche Bank and Capital One to comply with the House subpoenas for the president’s financial information. The court gave the president seven days to seek review by the Supreme Court in the case, which predates the public impeachment proceedings in the House.
In a 106-page ruling, the court said the House committees’ “interests in pursuing their constitutional legislative function is a far more significant public interest than whatever public interest inheres in avoiding the risk of a Chief Executive’s distraction arising from disclosure of documents reflecting his private financial transactions.”
“The Committees have already been delayed in the receipt of the subpoenaed material since April 11 when the subpoenas were issued. They need the remaining time to analyze the material, hold hearings, and draft bills for possible enactment,” according to the ruling written by Judge Jon O. Newman, who was joined by Judge Peter W. Hall.
The president’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said in a statement Tuesday that Trump’s legal team believes the subpoena is “invalid as issued” and is reviewing the ruling to determine next steps, “including seeking review at the Supreme Court.”
In a statement, Deutsche Bank said: “As we have said previously, we remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations.”
The House Intelligence and Financial Services committees are seeking more than 10 years of financial records on Trump, his three oldest children — Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka — and Trump’s businesses. The committees, led by Reps. Adam B. Schiff and Maxine Waters, both California Democrats, say they need the records as part of broad investigations into Russian money laundering and potential foreign influence involving Trump.
Trump’s lawyers say the committees are pushing the boundaries of their powers to embarrass the president and their subpoenas serve no legislative purpose. The subpoenas would sweep up every debit card transaction and check written by Trump, his children and even his grandchildren, they said.
“These subpoenas are overbroad, nonpertinent attempts to reconstruct Plaintiffs’ [Trump’s] entire financial history,” Patrick Strawbridge, one of Trump’s attorney, wrote in court filings.
The majority decision ordered the district court to give Trump and his family time to identify “all sensitive documents” that should potentially be excluded from the subpoenas. The committees could object to those potential exclusions, the court ruled.
“We have recognized that this loss of privacy is irreparable,” the majority decision said. But that is mitigated by the District Court review ordered by the court, the judges ruled. “The seriousness of the hardship … should be assessed in light of the fact that [Trump] is already required to expose for public scrutiny a considerable amount” of personal financial information.
After considering Trump’s arguments, “we conclude that they have not shown a likelihood of success on any of them,” the majority decision said.
Last month, the federal appeals court in Washington let stand an earlier ruling against the president, affirming that Congress can seek eight years of Trump’s tax records. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit previously ruled Trump’s claims that a congressional subpoena was invalid because lawmakers lacked a “legitimate legislative purpose” were incorrect. A majority of the court’s 11 active judges voted against revisiting the case.
In that case, the president is fighting a House Oversight Committee subpoena to his longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, and audits it prepared for Trump and several of his companies.
Trump has asked the Supreme Court to block the subpoena, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. agreed to temporarily put the order on hold to give the high court time to review the case.
A separate three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit also unanimously rejected Trump’s effort to block New York grand jury subpoenas for his eight years of Trump’s tax returns from his accounting firm. The panel ruled that “any presidential immunity from a state criminal process does not bar the enforcement of such subpoena,” according to the opinion written by Chief Judge Robert Katzmann.
This case centers on a subpoena from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., whose office is investigating hush-money payments made before the 2016 election to silence two women who said they had affairs years earlier with Trump. The president has denied the affairs.
Trump has also asked the Supreme Court to step in to stop disclosure of his financial records to New York prosecutors.
In the Deutsche Bank case, lawyers for the president’s largest lender told the appeals court it has tax returns for one person or organization that the subpoenas are seeking, however identifying details were redacted. Following a motion from media organizations including The Washington Post and CNN to have the name of the person or organization made public, Deutsche Bank told the appeals court it does not have Trump’s tax returns.
Deutsche Bank, a German banking giant, has been a major lender to both the Trump Organization and Kushner Companies, which previously was run by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, now a presidential adviser.
Trump’s company has taken out about $364 million in loans from Deutsche Bank since 2012, according to public filings. The loans included two worth $125 million to buy and renovate the Doral golf resort in Florida, a $170 million loan to renovate Washington’s Old Post Office into a Trump hotel, and a $69 million loan to refinance an existing Trump hotel in Chicago.
Douglas Letter, the House’s general counsel, questioned why the bank continued lending to Trump and his businesses after several of Trump’s businesses filed for bankruptcy and other banks stopped lending to him.
The trove of financial documents held by Deutsche Bank could give House Democrats a detailed road map for more than a decade of Trump’s financial history, including whom he did business with and the sources of his wealth.
“We might find out whether Trump has, to the public, overstated his assets and understated his personal benefit from his tax cut,” said Charles Tiefer, a former longtime House lawyer who is now a University of Baltimore law professor.
Source: MSN
