A federal judge in New York rejected President Donald Trump's request to keep his banks from producing financial records to lawmakers.
U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos, ruling from the bench Wednesday, said that while the president, his family and his business would suffer irreparable harm from public disclosure of the records, they were "unlikely to succeed on the merits" with their argument that the congressional subpoenas are improper.
Ramos, reading his 25-page opinion in a New York courtroom, said he wouldn't grant Trump's request for a preliminary injunction.
The Trumps sued Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp. last month to block them from complying with demands by congressional Democrats for broad financial information.
"There will be no way to unring the bell once the Banks give Congress the requested information," Trump attorneys William Consovoy, Patrick Strawbridge and Marc Mukasey wrote. "The Committees will have reviewed confidential documents that this Court may later determine were illegally subpoenaed."
Congress has the broad authority to investigate matters related to possible legislation, but that doesn't mean that its powers are limited to probes that involve contemplated bills, Ramos said.
He noted that Congress performs many different functions that include looking into corruption, inefficiency or waste in federal government agencies.
"Put simply, the power of Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process," Ramos said.
The banks have taken no position on the legality of the subpoenas and are letting lawyers for the president and the two House panels, the Financial Services and the Intelligence committees, fight it out themselves.
Representatives of the Trump Organization, Deutsche Bank and Capital One didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
After Ramos issued his ruling, Trump's lawyers asked for a stay to delay its implementation. That request was rejected. Strawbridge said it was "probably a safe bet" that the president would appeal the ruling.
The judge noted that both sides had agreed that the subpoenas would not require a response for another week, giving Trump, his family and his companies time to appeal.
In a written submission before Wednesday's hearing, lawyers for two congressional committees wrote that Trump's effort to block the subpoenas was "flatly inconsistent with nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent."
Attorney Douglas Letter argued Wednesday that Trump should not be able to block "a very major complex investigation across a whole industry, not just Mr. Trump."
He said there were about 10 subpoenas sent to individuals or entities that have "nothing to do with Mr. Trump."
Letter said there is a "massive fundamental misunderstanding by Mr. Trump about Congress ... that we're a nuisance and we can't investigate him."
In court papers, lawyers said the House's Committee on Financial Services and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence sought the information as they investigate "serious and urgent questions concerning the safety of banking practices, money laundering in the financial sector, foreign influence in the U.S. political process, and the threat of foreign financial leverage, including over the president, his family and his business."
Lawyers for Trump responded in writing that accepting the view of the committees would mean "Congress can issue a subpoena on any matter, at any time, for any reason, to any person, and there is basically nothing a federal court can do about it."
The ruling comes two days after a federal judge in Washington ruled against a Trump effort to block a subpoena seeking documents from his accounting firm, Mazars USA LLP. Trump is appealing the decision.
"I am very pleased but not surprised" by the latest ruling, said Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the Oversight Committee.
The Oversight Committee wasn't one of the panels seeking the bank records. But Cummings said the two rulings together solidify Congress' right to these documents.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., welcomed Wednesday's ruling, saying she was "very excited" by the news.
"Two in one week: Mazar Monday, Deutsche Bank today," she said.
The case is Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG, 19-cv-03826, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
N.Y. LEGISLATION
Separately, New York lawmakers gave final passage to legislation Wednesday that would allow Trump's state tax returns to be released to congressional committees that have, so far, been barred from getting the president's federal filings.
The Democrat-led Senate and Assembly both approved the measures Wednesday, sending them to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat. A spokesman has said the governor supports the principle behind the legislation but will review the bill carefully before deciding whether to sign it.
The legislation doesn't target Trump by name, but it would allow the leaders of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee or the Joint Committee on Taxation to get access to any New York state tax returns filed by elected officials and top appointed officials. The legislation would apply to personal income tax returns, as well as business taxes paid in New York.
An earlier version of the proposal that passed the state Senate two weeks ago would have allowed congressional committees to get any New Yorker's returns, regardless of whether they held public office. Lawmakers later narrowed the legislation to address concerns that it went too far, prompting the Senate to hold a second vote Wednesday on the new language.
New York Republicans have railed against the bill. John Flanagan, who leads the Senate GOP, called the legislation "troubling" and "bad public policy."
Fellow GOP lawmakers said the new proposal's narrower focus shows Democrats went too far with their first proposal.
"This bill is nothing more than political showmanship, and we all know it," said Assembly Andrew Goodell, who represents a mostly rural western New York district.
Republicans also blasted Democrats for going after the president instead of focusing on challenges closer to home.
"The fact that we're talking about taxes in this house is ironic because we're not talking about the taxes that New Yorkers pay, which are the highest in the nation," said Rob Ortt, a senator from the Buffalo area.
But the proposals' Democratic sponsors -- Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblyman David Buchwald -- said the legislation promotes government transparency at a time when Americans need to know whether their elected leaders are putting the public's interest first.
"We are affirming Congress' role as a co-equal branch of government and the sacred constitutional principle that nobody is above the law, not even the highest elected official in the land," Hoylman said.
The proposed changes to state law were made during a battle going on in Washington over Trump's federal returns.
Democrats are seeking six years of Trump's personal and business tax returns to aid a committee investigation into whether the IRS is doing its job properly to audit a sitting president and whether the law governing such audits needs to be strengthened.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has said he wouldn't comply with a congressional subpoena seeking the tax returns, in part because the request "lacks a legitimate legislative purpose." U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has threatened to go to court to get the administration to comply.
Information for this article was contributed by Bob Van Voris, Chris Dolmetsch and Billy House of Bloomberg News; by Chris Carola, David Klepper and Larry Neumeister of The Associated Press; and by Renae Merle, Michael Kranish, Felicia Sonmez, Reis Thebault and Karoun Demirjian of The Washington Post.
A Section on 05/23/2019