Appeals Court Denies Trump Attempt To Keep Financial Records From Congress

The noose tightens:

A federal appeals court has sided with House Democrats seeking to obtain President Trump’s private financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, stating that "the public interest favors denial of a preliminary injunction.”

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit came in the ongoing legal battle Trump has waged over access to his private business records -- including two cases that have already reached the Supreme Court.

The New York-based appeals court upheld Congress’s broad investigative authority and ordered the two banks to comply with the House subpoenas for the president’s financial information. The case pre-dates the public impeachment proceedings in the House. [snip]

The House Intelligence and Financial Services committees are seeking more than 10 years of financial records on Trump, his three oldest children – Eric, Don and Ivanka -- and Trump’s businesses. The committees, led by Reps. Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters, both California Democrats, say they need the records as part of broad investigations into Russian money laundering and potential foreign influence involving Trump.

More than anything else, disclosure of Putin asset Donald "Impeachable Me" Trump's finances would potentially reveal the scope and depth of Russia's hold on him, including underwriting loans to prop up Trump businesses and money laundering through Trump properties, as well as fraud and tax evasion.

As always, we may soon see how the party- before- country Republican Supreme Court will come down on the various cases involving their boy Trump's finances and taxes.  (Is that foreshadowing?)

Judge: Trump Financial Records Must Be Given To Congress

In his decision yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that con man and sociopath Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump's financial accounting firm Mazars USA LLP must turn over his subpoenaed financial records to the House Oversight Committee. The judge gave Trump's lawyers a week to appeal the decision.

Trump's financial records from 2011 to 2018 are expected to reveal much of his dealings with foreign entities which may be compromising his decisions to this day. They are also expected to reveal that his purported wealth is much less than he has stated, and that he fraudulently inflated or deflated his assets depending on the financial situation, as his former fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress.

Judge Mehta didn't spare the sarcasm in his ruling, comparing the arguments advanced by Trump's lawyers to arguments by President James Buchanan over Congressional oversight authority:

"Mehta’s ruling drew comparisons between Trump and President James Buchanan, whom historians have blamed for failing to prevent the Civil War and who is generally considered one of the country’s worst leaders. Buchanan, too, complained bitterly about 'harassing' congressional inquiries. [snip]  

'Congress plainly views itself as having sweeping authority to investigate illegal conduct of a President, before and after taking office,' he wrote. 'This court is not prepared to roll back the tide of history.'”

The strong District Court decision will give Congressional committees optimism that the multiple subpoenas being unlawfully ignored by the White (Supremacist) House, Justice Department and Treasury Department will be upheld by the Court. The truth will out, and Trump's scams and compromised position will be revealed.

BONUS:   Something something karma --

I wonder who the chief judge is in the circuit where all of the fights between Congress and Trump will play out and whether he cares about partisan norm-busting. Oh that's right...it's some guy named Merrick Garland.

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) May 20, 2019

BONUS II:  Catherine Rampell has a good read about the importance of discovering what disturbing or incriminating evidence Trump is desperate to keep hidden (with the help of his rotted out Republican Party).

Yesterday Was A Bad, Bad Day For Trump

The expectation is that corrupt demagogue and fraudster Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump will not only try to fight yesterday's order to the Internal Revenue Service by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal to release six years of Trump's tax returns, but will shake in fear and rage at the coming dissection of his individual and business tax returns by the House. (Read Chairman Neal's letter here). Unfortunately for Trump, the law gives the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee the absolute power to get Trump's tax returns, no subpoena necessary. That's not to say that Trump won't order them withheld, which would be a direct violation of the law. We'll see if the IRS Commissioner and plutocratic money fondler Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have the stomach for it though. If not, as expected, it's going to end up in the Supreme Court. Neal's letter also jabs Trump on his claim that his taxes have been under audit, by asking the IRS for any evidence of that claim.

In a separate development yesterday, Mazars USA, the auditing and accounting firm that handles Trump's financial statements, stepped forward to say that they would release those statements going back 10 years in response to a "friendly" subpoena from the House Oversight Committee, to which Committee Chair Elijah Cummings responded that they'd do just that shortly. In the testimony of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, he indicated that Trump often inflated or deflated his assets depending on the situation, whether to banks from which he was seeking a loan, or insurance companies, raising the potential that Trump committed bank and insurance fraud.

Added to these major developments, yesterday's allegations from some of the investigators and agents on Special Counsel Mueller's team that Trump attorney William Barr's whitewashing letter on the Mueller report excluded a lot of damaging information about Trump and his co-conspirators (likely on obstruction of justice) helped to make it a very bad day for Trump.