Court: Trump records must be given to House

President Donald Trump, under siege from House Democrats weighing impeachment, suffered a stinging blow as a federal appeals court upheld a subpoena ordering his accountants to provide Congress with his financial records.

The ruling, by a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, means Trump will lose control of his long-secret financial records at Mazars USA LLP unless the full court reconsiders the decision or the U.S. Supreme Court blocks it.

In their 2-1 decision, the judges rejected arguments made by lawyers for the president that the House Oversight and Reform Committee had no legitimate legislative reason to seek the information.

“Disputes between Congress and the president are a recurring plot in our national story,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote in the majority’s 66page opinion. “And that is precisely what the Framers intended.” He quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said that the purpose of the separation of powers was “to save the people from autocracy.”

The ruling, which doesn’t take effect for at least seven days, comes shortly after a federal judge in New York rejected Trump’s challenge to a separate, state subpoena requiring Mazars to turn over Trump’s tax filings and other financial records to New York prosecutors — though the president won a lastminute delay pending an emergency appeal.

Friday’s majority opinion called the House subpoena “a valid exercise of the legislative oversight authority because it seeks information important to determining the fitness of legislation to address potential problems within the Executive Branch and the electoral system.”