Trump firm must provide records to Congress: court rules Mazars has 'uniquely pertinent information'

Former President Donald Trump suffered yet another defeat in court on Friday as he lost an attempt to keep his financial records from Congress.

"A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a House committee is entitled to a wide array of records on former President Donald Trump’s finances and business practices, but the court further narrowed aspects of the subpoena the Democrat-controlled House issued to Trump’s accountants in 2019," Josh Gerstein reported for Politico. "If the decision from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stands, Trump’s former accounting firm Mazars will have to give the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee five years of records on potential inaccuracies in the financial statements of Trump or his business and a little more than two years of records related to the lease with the federal government for the former Trump International Hotel in Washington."

Trump could appeal to the full D.C. court of appeals or try taking his case straight to the Supreme Court.

"Mazars will also have to provide records from 2017 and 2018 on transactions between the Trump Organization and any foreign, local or state government or official," Politico reported. "Two years ago to the day from Friday’s ruling, the justices issued an opinion rejecting Trump’s sweeping claims of executive privilege but declared that lower courts did not do enough to scrutinize the House panel’s purported needs for the information and whether the subpoena was tailored to those needs."

D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan was joined by Judge Judith Rogers in the majority opinion.

“President Trump has uniquely pertinent information that cannot reasonably be obtained from any other source,” Srinivasan wrote in a 67-page opinion. “Still, the Committee’s emoluments-related objectives cannot possibly justify the breadth of documents encompassed by the subpoena. ... We thus narrow the subpoena in several respects.”