Ruling on release of Trump records upheld on appeal

WASHINGTON — A full federal appeals court on Wednesday let stand an earlier ruling that President Donald Trump’s accounting firm must turn over eight years of his financial records to Congress, bringing the case to the threshold of a likely Supreme Court battle.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected his request that it rehear a case in which he challenged the subpoena to the firm, Mazars USA. A panel of the court had sided with lawmakers in that earlier ruling.

The president will now appeal to the Supreme Court, said a lawyer for Trump, Jay Sekulow.

“In light of the well-reasoned dissent, we will be seeking review at the Supreme Court,” Sekulow said in a statement.

Lawyers representing Trump had argued that Congress had no legitimate legislative authority to seek his business records because the panel seeking them, the House Oversight and Reform Committee, was primarily trying to determine whether he broke existing laws — not weighing whether to enact a new one.

Lawyers for House Democrats rejected that argument, maintaining that it was well within Congress’ constitutional authority to seek the records — both as a matter of oversight and as it considered whether new presidential ethics and financial disclosure laws are necessary.

A three-judge appeals court panel in October rejected that argument and upheld Congress’ authority to issue the subpoena by a 2-1 vote. But Trump petitioned the full court to reconsider the case. The court on Wednesday rejected his request, 8-3.

The case was set in motion before House Democrats began an impeachment inquiry, so whether the investigation into whether Trump should be removed from office has not been part of the legal arguments in the case.

The committee sought the records after Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 midterm election, and after it came to light that Trump had failed to list on his ethics disclosure forms a debt that he owed and then repaid to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Cohen had fronted a hush payment to a pornographic actress, Stormy Daniels, just before the 2016 election to induce her to keep quiet about an affair she claimed to have had with Trump. He has denied the relationship.

Cohen also testified before Congress that Trump fraudulently changed the value of his assets for different purposes, like inflating their value on loan applications but deflating them on tax filings. Cohen was separately convicted of lying to Congress in earlier testimony.

The eight judges in the majority included seven appointed by Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. One, Judge Thomas Griffith, was appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican.

The three judges who dissented were all appointed by Republican presidents: both of Trump’s appointees on the bench, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, the latter of whom had been the dissenting vote in the earlier panel decision. The third was a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush, Karen Henderson.

None of the judges in the majority filed a new opinion supplementing the panel’s ruling.