The former president is still fighting tooth and nail to keep his financial documents hidden.
is continuing to fight lawmakers’ efforts to get their hands on his financial records—and to use the same “presidential harassment” argument to justify stonewalling the House Oversight Committee. “No prior Congress has demanded this kind of information, but every future Congress will if this court upholds the subpoena,”on Monday. “There’s no principled way to limit the fallout to President Trump.”
That argument hasn’t exactly worked for him before; though a federal judge in August put limits on what records House investigators could seek, the implication that Trump is completely above being subpoenaed has not passed legal muster. But it could be enough to help him execute his standard legal strategy: dragging out litigation for as long as possible.
The case has been going on since 2019, when Democrats—fresh off a midterm victory that gave them control of the House of Representatives—demanded Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm, turn over his elusive financial records. Trump sued Mazars to block the firm from releasing them and has been battling in court to keep lawmakers from obtaining them.
prosecutors to access Trump’s tax returns but kept Congress from doing so for now, asking lower courts to consider whether the subpoenas are overly broad and if lawmakers could obtain the information elsewhere.ruled that congressional investigators could obtain Trump’s tax returns from his years in office and certain other records from the past decade, but no others.
provide evidence of wrongdoing, wants none of his documents released, and House lawmakers want more material than Mehta’s ruling would allow. Both sides appealed, and the case went to a three-judge panel.