Appeals Court Allows For House Democrats to See More of Trump’s Financial Records

A federal appeals court narrowed the range of documents House Democrats are entitled to in their years-long investigation of Donald Trump’s finances.

The Friday decision from the federal appeals court in Washington is just the latest round in the legal fight that began in 2019 when Democrats were newly in charge of the House of Representatives and subpoenaed a wealth of records from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA. A federal judge in Washington already had ruled that lawmakers were entitled to review a more limited set of records than they initially wanted.

In the first decision, the judge had found that the committee was entitled to “eight years of financial information” about the government’s lease agreement with the Trump Organization for the Old Post Office Building, the location of the Trump International Hotel, “as well as a broader set of information from the first two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency.”

Unless an expanded panel of judges or the Supreme Court reverses the appeals court' decision, Trump will be forced to defend his business actions in court.

Read more about Trump's finances being closer to scrutiny in @business story: https://t.co/BvvRySgr1H pic.twitter.com/UT5Ya4ZI2U

— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) September 13, 2019

The appellate panel narrowed the request even more, holding that the House Committee on Oversight and Reform should be given records of financial ties between foreign countries and Trump or any of his businesses for 2017-18.  It also ordered Mazars USA to turn over documents between November 2016 and 2018 relating to the Trump company that held the lease granted by the federal government for the former Trump International Hotel located between the White House and the Capitol.

Hey remember the Congressional subpoena for Trump’s financial records that he fought up to SCOTUS, which then punted it back to lower courts?

DC Circuit now says Congress has authority to subpoena POTUS financial records, but narrows the subpoena’s scope: https://t.co/CpjtqWxMWG pic.twitter.com/hACYWiXvlE

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— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) July 8, 2022

“We determine here that the Committee has shown the requisite need for some, but far from all, of the presidential information covered by its subpoena,” Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote in an opinion joined by Judge Judith Rogers. The third judge who heard arguments in the case is Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dropped out of the case when President Joe Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court.