The Courts Are Doing Their Job. Now Congress Must Do Its Own.
So much losing. From Reuters:
U.S. President Donald Trump, three of his children and the Trump Organization on Wednesday lost their bid to block Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp from providing financial records to Democratic lawmakers investigating Trump’s businesses. U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos ruled at a court hearing in New York that Congress has the legal authority to demand the records, clearing the way for the banks to comply with subpoenas issued to them by two U.S. House of Representatives committees last month.
This is the second time this week that a court has laughed out of itself the contention that Congress has to have a "specific legislative function" in mind when it asks for these records, or that there is some fanciful "privilege" that can be invoked to prevent the president*'s bankers and/or accountants from complying with congressional subpoenas.
The subpoena on Deutsche Bank seeks extensive records of accounts, transactions and investments linked to Trump, his three oldest children, their immediate family members and several Trump Organization entities, as well as records of ties they might have to foreign entities. Deutsche Bank has long been a principal lender for Trump’s real estate business and a 2017 disclosure form showed that Trump had at least $130 million of liabilities to the bank.
The subpoena on Capital One seeks records related to multiple entities tied to the Trump Organization’s hotel business. In March, before issuing their subpoena, Democratic lawmakers asked Capital One for documents concerning potential conflicts of interest tied to Trump’s Washington hotel and other business interests since he became president in January 2017.
All things being equal-and given what's been going on with the federal courts, that's more of a qualifier than it used to be-judges generally get fed up with nonsense arguments such as the ones that the president*'s lawyers keep presenting in various courtrooms for the purpose of keeping the seedy underworld of the president*'s finances concealed. This is especially true when lawyers keep bringing the same bullshit arguments up time after time.
It is possible that, in the course of, you know, doing its job, the judiciary branch of the government is going to take down the White House's defensive strategy brick-by-brick.
The judge said on Wednesday that the committees had the power to issue the subpoenas under Congress’ “broad” power to conduct investigations to further legislation. He also rejected Trump’s argument that they were barred by a federal financial privacy laws, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, saying the law does not apply to congressional investigations.
The problem, of course, is that, for any of us to gain anything from all this legal beagle-ing, Congress has to do its job after the courts do theirs. Everything has to work the way it was designed to work in order to find a solution to an administration* dedicated to making sure nothing really does.
Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.
('You Might Also Like',)
