Trump hotel lawsuit can move forward

WASHINGTON — The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland said they are moving forward with subpoenas for records in their case accusing President Trump of profiting off the presidency.

U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte approved the legal discovery schedule in an order Monday. Such information would probably provide the first clear picture of the finances of Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel.

Trump’s Justice Department lawyers filed a notice to the court Friday that appeared to challenge the Maryland judge’s decision to allow the case to move forward. The president’s notice that he may seek a writ of mandamus — to have the appeal heard by a higher court — is considered an “extraordinary remedy” that’s hard to prove and partly rests on showing Messitte’s decisions to be clearly wrong.

“We’ve got the discovery ready to go,” said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. “Their objective at this point is just to keep the doors shut, they don’t want any of this information out in public and they don’t want our case to move forward. So they’re going to be obstructing as much as they can.”

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said in a statement that the subpoenas would go out to thirdparty organizations and federal agencies “to gather the necessary evidence to prove that President Trump is violating the Constitution’s emoluments clauses — our nation’s original anticorruption laws.”

Trump has been fighting multiple lawsuits that argue foreign representatives’ spending money at the Trump International Hotel are violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bans federal officials from accepting benefits from foreign or state governments without congressional approval.