Panel delays deadline on Trump files
WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee has agreed to postpone its deadline for a subpoena of President Donald Trump’s financial records until after a court rules on a lawsuit filed by the president on the matter, according to a court filing Tuesday.
Trump had filed the lawsuit Monday against his own accounting firm and the chairman of the House panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to block the financial documents’ release.
A hearing has been set for May 14, according to Tuesday’s court filing.
Trump is facing mounting investigations by House committees into his finances, his campaign and allegations that he sought to obstruct justice during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
Cummings’ subpoena relates in part to “Statements of Financial Condition” that the accounting firm, Mazars USA, produced for Trump before he took office.
These statements are unaudited summations of Trump’s assets, debts and net worth, which Mazars compiled annually for Trump. The statements omitted some debts, overvalued some assets and misstated Cummings
some key facts in ways that made Trump seem wealthier than he was.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that the subpoena represents an “unprecedented overreach by Congress” because it is unrelated to the legislative branch’s main function of writing bills.
In a statement Monday, Cummings said the subpoena was “duly authorized” and called the lawsuit “baseless.”
Separately, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin again delayed a decision on whether to turn over Trump’s tax returns to Congress, telling House lawmakers late Tuesday that the Treasury and Justice departments needed until May 6 to assess the legality of the “unprecedented” request.
In a letter to Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Mnuchin said that the Treasury Department “cannot act upon your request unless and until it is determined to be consistent with law.” Mnuchin said the department expected to make a final decision by May 6 “after receiving the Justice Department’s legal conclusions.”
Earlier Tuesday, Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, signaled that Trump was girding for a protracted fight over his tax returns.
“As I understand it, the president is pretty clear, once he’s out of audit, he’ll think about doing it, but he is not inclined to do so at this time,” Gidley said on Fox News.
This month, Neal formally requested from the IRS six years’ worth of the president’s personal and business tax returns.
The Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, missed the first deadline to provide the returns, and Mnuchin previously told Neal in a letter that he needed more time to study the lawfulness of the request.
Mnuchin expressed concern that the request was being made for political purposes and was a violation of taxpayer privacy that could lead to the IRS being weaponized against both parties in the future.
Mnuchin, in his most recent letter, said Neal’s request represented “exposure for the sake of exposure” of Trump’s tax returns and said it was different than traditional requests for taxpayer information, which tend to be used for statistical purposes to aid legislation.
An appendix to the letter listed examples of Neal and other Democrats calling for Trump’s tax returns to be made public.
Neal on Tuesday did not indicate his next move, which could include a subpoena or a lawsuit. The matter could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.