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By Associated press
A federal judge is skeptical of President Donald Trump's efforts to prevent Congress from obtaining some of its financial statements.
Judge Amit Mehta spent about an hour and a half holding a hearing Tuesday on Trump's efforts to keep the Congress financial records. Mehta did not decide at the hearing whether the House's subpoena of Trump's financial documents was a valid exercise of the legislature, but said he would do so "swiftly".
The lawsuit before Mehta came as the White House and the president's lawyers made considerable efforts to refuse to cooperate with requests for information and documents from Congress. And this is the first of what will probably be related to Trump's wall construction.
Democrats in the House said that battles in the courts were inevitable because they had submitted dozens of requests for documents and witnesses that the White House and other members of the administration had rejected.
Trump, his company and his family also sued in New York against Deutsche Bank and Capital One for the purpose of blocking House Financial Services' subpoenas and intelligence panels seeking their banking and financial records. A hearing in this case is scheduled for May 22nd.
While Trump has unleashed these fights in court, Democrats should eventually engage some of their own lawsuits against the administration.
The Democrats have also issued subpoenas for six years of Trump's tax documents and have given Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig a deadline next Friday to release them.
In the Mehta case, Trump and his company sued the House's oversight committee in April to block a subpoena to Mazars USA, an accountant for the president and the Trump organization. Trump's lawyers said the subpoena "has no legitimate legislative purpose" and accused the Democrats of harassing Trump and exercising a new majority in Congress to try to tarnish the president's reputation.
But counsel for the House told the judge that the Constitution confers broad investigative powers on Congress and that it is not necessary to link an investigation that it is leading to a specific bill to the study.
Mehta, who was appointed to office by President Barack Obama, suggested at the hearing that Congress had wide latitude to investigate. He told Trump's lawyer, William Consovoy, that there had been no cases since 1880 when the Supreme Court or a court of appeal had concluded that Congress had exceeded his limits by issuing a subpoena.
Douglas Letter, a lawyer in the House, told the judge that "President Trump has no chance of succeeding here." And he stated that Trump had taken the position that Congress "ingeniously" in the management of the country.
Mehta hinted to Letter that the subpoena seemed to be an effort to get into Trump's private affairs. And he asked Letter there were limits to what Congress can get. The letter acknowledged that there were some limitations, suggesting that a request for President's blood or diary since childhood might be too extreme. But he said that the subpoena for the financial documents is clearly admissible.
The judge seemed to be looking to resolve the matter quickly, although he said he would accept additional documents this week.
"We will not drag this," he said at one point.
Trump's attorney, Consovoy, indicated towards the end of the hearing that his client would appeal if the judge ruled against him.
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