Former President Donald Trump and the House Oversight Committee failed to agree on the release of his financial documents after several rounds of negotiations and the committee says a federal judge should make the final decision.
Trump asserted that he’d make “a significant portion of the documents” available to committee staff and or members “on reasonable terms.” But the panel said in court papers that Trump proposed to produce “zero documents.” It added that restrictions the former president has proposed — making a limited set of documents available only privately — would make it impossible for the committee to use the information in an effective manner.
The committee had subpoenaed Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, for the documents more than two years ago as part of an investigation into possible conflicts of interest. He sued to block the subpoena. The legal battle reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that congressional subpoenas seeking the president’s personal information must be “no broader than reasonably necessary” and ordered lower courts to determine whether the House’s request met that standard.
The committee asked Judge Amit P. Mehta of United States District Court in Washington to hold a hearing on July 1 and then decide without a trial as soon as possible whether Trump must release the documents.
“There is no discernible path to a negotiated resolution,” Douglas Letter, the general counsel of the U.S. House, wrote in a filing on Wednesday. “The court should not allow the former president to run out the clock not only on one Congress, but on two Congresses.”
