Trump Sues Two Banking Giants Amid Congressional Subpoenas
President Donald Trump is fighting back against efforts of Democrat-led investigations to comb through financial records belonging to him, three of his children and Trump’s businesses.
On Monday, Trump, joined by Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, filed suit against Deutsche Bank and Capital One to prevent them for turning over records requested by House Democrats, The New York Times reported.
The banks have been subpoenaed by Democrat-led House panels that have launched wide-ranging investigations against Trump. Trump has claimed all of the investigations are political in nature; House Democrats say they are seeking to uncover what they claim is a wide-ranging pattern of misconduct.
“This case involves congressional subpoenas that have no legitimate or lawful purpose,” the suit filed by the Trumps said.
“The subpoenas were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses and the private information of the president and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage. No grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one.”
Democrats fired back at the Trump family.
California Reps. Maxine Waters, chair of the Financial Services Committee, and Adam Schiff, chair of Intelligence Committee, called the Trump lawsuit “meritless” and said it demonstrated “the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress’s constitutional oversight authority.”
“As a private businessman, Trump routinely used his well-known litigiousness and the threat of lawsuits to intimidate others, but he will find that Congress will not be deterred from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities. This lawsuit is not designed to succeed; it is only designed to put off meaningful accountability as long as possible,” they said.
The Trump lawsuit indicated that Waters and Schiff did not provide Trump’s attorneys with copies of the subpoenas, but said the contents of the subpoenas were described by representatives of the banks. This lead Trump’s attorneys to claim that the House Democrats are seeking all banking and financial records “not just concerning the individual Plaintiffs, but also their own family members.”
Trump’s attorneys said the lawsuit was necessary to protect Trump, his family members and his business.
“The subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank and Capital One by Chairpersons Schiff and Waters are unlawful and illegitimate,” a statement from Trump’s lawyers read, according to CNN.
“They seek information going back decades from anyone with even a tangential connection to the President, including children, minors and spouses. Every citizen should be concerned about this sweeping, lawless, invasion of privacy. We look forward to vindicating our clients’ rights in this matter,” the statement said.
The lawsuit said that the subpoenas are a case of congressional overreach because no legislative purpose is served by them.
“‘Oversight’ and ‘transparency,’ in a vacuum, are not legitimate legislative purposes that can justify subpoenaing a private citizen,” the suit said.
“For more than a century, in fact, the Supreme Court has been quite ‘sure’ that neither the House nor Senate ‘possesses the general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the citizen.’”
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