Elijah Cummings U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, during a Committee on Oversight & Government Reform hearing in 2011. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Lawyers for Donald Trump and for the U.S. House on Wednesday asked a Washington federal appeals court to expedite its review of a congressional subpoena that seeks financial records from the president's longtime accounting firm.

The new case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will mark the first time a federal appeals panel will weigh a House subpoena that demands Trump-related financial information. The president has vowed to resist congressional subpoenas seeking records and testimony from lawyers and other officials in his orbit.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of the District of Columbia on Monday ruled Trump and his businesses have no lawful ground to block the House Oversight Committee subpoena that was served on the accounting firm Mazars USA LLP. Mazars, represented by a team from Blank Rome, has not taken a position on the demand for records.

“Courts have grappled for more than a century with the question of the scope of Congress's investigative power,” Mehta said in his ruling. “The binding principle that emerges from these judicial decisions is that courts must presume Congress is acting in furtherance of its constitutional responsibility to legislate and must defer to congressional judgments about what Congress needs to carry out that purpose.”

Trump's attorneys—he is represented by the firms Consovoy McCarthy Park and Michael Best & Friedrich—on Wednesday jointly filed court papers asking the D.C. Circuit to expedite the appeal. The proposed schedule would push the dispute into mid-July, and during that time the House would agree to suspend the production of documents that are required by the subpoena to Mazars.

“I was very encouraged earlier this week when the district court issued its strong ruling supporting Congress' right to conduct investigations, and I am encouraged that we have now been able to reach this agreement to seek an expedited appeal,” U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement. “I hope the court approves our request so we can move forward and effectively discharge our responsibilities under the Constitution.”

The court filing said Mazars has agreed to continue “collecting and preparing responsive documents but not to produce any documents in response to the subpoena during that period.”

Trump's attorneys said they would file “emergency” court papers to freeze enforcement of Mehta's ruling if the D.C. Circuit does not agree to the proposed expedited schedule.

“The committee, through counsel for the House of Representatives, agrees to suspend the time for production set by the subpoena until that motion is decided and, if it is denied, until seven days thereafter,” according to Wednesday's court filing.

The litigation in the D.C. Circuit is unfolding amid a broader dispute between House Democrats and the White House related to ongoing investigations of Trump and his business empire, access to his tax returns, and access to an unredacted copy of the special counsel's investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump's lawyers had urged a New York federal court to block a subpoena that involves House Democrats' demands for information from Deutsche Bank and Capital One. U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District of New York, who heard arguments Wednesday afternoon, ruled against Trump. Ramos, like Mehta, also denied to stay enforcement of the subpoena pending Trump's appeal.

Democrats and other critics of the Trump administration are hopeful the federal courts will move quickly on the various subpoena fights. Mehta sped up his deliberation of the accounting firm subpoena, over objections made by Trump's legal team.

Both sides Wednesday asked the D.C. Circuit to hear oral arguments sometime after mid-July, which would mark a rare hearing for the court. The D.C. Circuit's argument cycle typically ends in May, and it resumes in the fall.

Wednesday's court filing in the D.C. Circuit was signed by Douglas Letter, the U.S. House general counsel; William Consovoy of Washington's Consovoy McCarthy, a lead attorney for Trump; and Jerry Bernstein of Blank Rome, a lawyer for Mazars.

 

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