U.S. appeals court rules Trump financial records must be turned over to House panel

On Friday, a Washington appeals court ruled that former President Donald Trump must furnish a congressional committee with any documentation which would be deemed as important relating to the investigation into Trump’s conflicts of interest.

According to Politico, these documents can include any payments made from official government entities to Trump hotels along with any documentation relating to an old post office building that Trump leased from the US government.

“President Trump has uniquely pertinent information that cannot reasonably be obtained from any other source,” said D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan said in his reasoning. Judge Judith Rogers also concurred with this decision, saying, “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.”

The panel did however narrow the time period and the types of documents that were requested by the committee. “We conclude that each party is half right,” Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote. 

Documents which may prove that Trump broken the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause can be requested. Trump is only obliged to provide documents that pertain to this specific legislation.

The oversight committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney expressed her disappointment at the decision. “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.”

A subpoena for these documents was first requested in 2019. Trump has repeatedly called the investigations into him political “witch hunts.”

At the time, the Supreme Court emphasized a need to clarify why the documents were required. “Without limits on its subpoena powers, Congress could ‘exert an imperious control’ over the Executive Branch and aggrandize itself at the President’s expense, just as the Framers feared,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion.

An appeals court has stated that Trump is within right rights to appeal this verdict, so there is scope for this legal wrangle to continue for longer.