Former President Donald Trump must hand over financial records to a Congressional committee investigating his potential conflicts of interests.
A Washington appeals court ruled Friday that the House Oversight Committee can obtain among other things documents related to payments made by government officials to Trump hotels, accounting records and information related to a hotel in the Old Post Office building that Trump leased from the federal government. While upholding the subpoena, the panel narrowed the time period and types of documents that the committee had sought.
“We conclude that each party is half right,” Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote. The court supported Trump’s claim that the separation-of-powers scrutiny prescribed by the Supreme Court applies to former presidents. But it also agreed with the committee that the subpoena is valid because it serves a legislative purpose.
Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, said it was disappointing the court narrowed the subpoena in some respects but the committee was pleased the panel rejected Trump’s “spurious” arguments that Congress couldn’t investigate his financial misconduct.
“Former President Donald Trump displayed an unprecedented disregard for federal ethics and financial transparency,” Maloney said in a statement. “Today’s decision affirmed Congress’s broad constitutional authority to conduct investigations, even when those investigations involve wrongdoing by the president.”
The ruling follows a long legal battle between the committee and the former president. In 2019, the committee subpoenaed Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, for the financial records. He sued to block the subpoena.
The dispute eventually landed in the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that congressional subpoenas seeking the president’s personal information must be “no broader than reasonably necessary.” It ordered lower courts to determine whether that test was met. The district court in Washington partly upheld the subpoena and both Trump and the committee appealed.
In its opinion, the appeals court said the committee is justified in seeking information on the amounts paid by foreign and domestic government officials to Trump hotels. It said the information could be used to make reforms such as placing limits on payments to the president or requiring additional disclosures of smaller gifts or compensation.
But the court narrowed the request to a two-year period during Trump’s presidency from the eight years sought by the committee. It said the subpoena could only cover information involving financial connections between Trump or his businesses and government officials or agencies.
The court also ruled that Trump must hand over accounting records and communications with accountants that only relate to undisclosed, false or inaccurate information about reported assets, liabilities and income from 2014 to 2018. Such information could help craft laws to close loopholes that can be used by presidents to avoid properly disclosing financial interests, the court said.
“The committee seeks to address gaps that allegedly allowed this president to make numerous omissions in his disclosure forms, evidence of which President Trump does little to dispute,” Srinivasan wrote.
— With assistance from Billy House
