MANHATTAN (CN) – When the week began, President Donald Trump sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One to quash the congressional subpoenas leveled against them. Two committees in the House of Representatives returned fire just before the week closed.
“Only the committees can adequately defend their own interests in this action,” the House’s general counsel Douglas Letter wrote on Friday afternoon. “And the committees have acted expeditiously to intervene, filing this motion—with the consent of all parties—only four days after the complaint was filed.”
Formally filing their joint motion to intervene, the Committee on Financial Services and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced their intention to oppose any attempt by Trump, his family or his companies to block the subpoenas.
“The committees have broad legislative, investigative, and oversight authority. Pursuant to this authority, the committees are conducting various investigations on issues of national significance,” the four-page letter states.
Among their “wide-ranging investigations,” the Committee on Financial Services listed probes into loan fraud, Bank Secrecy Act compliance and money laundering.
The House Intelligence Committee cited its investigations into “Russia and other foreign entities to influence the U.S. political process during and since the 2016 election.”
“HPSCI is also evaluating whether the structure, legal authorities, policies, and resources of the U.S. government’s intelligence, counterintelligence, and law enforcement elements are adequate to combat this threat to U.S. national security,” the letter states.
Minutes after the filing of this letter, Trump’s legal team submitted arguments asking U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos to issue a preliminary injunction.
“According to the banks, the committees’ sweeping subpoenas seek a mountain of documents—covering at least the last ten years—not only about President Trump, but also his children, their children and spouses, a number of his businesses, and even any affiliates, employees, or agents of those businesses,” the memo states. “The committees are demanding, among other things, records of every single checking-account withdrawal, credit-card swipe, or debit-card purchase—no matter how trivial or small—made by each and every member of the Trump family.”
Representing the Trump family is Convosoy McCarthy Park attorney Patrick Strawbridge.
Marc Mukasey, the scion of former U.S. Attorney Michael Mukasey and counsel on the Trump Foundation litigation, represents a thicket of seven Trump corporations, LLCs and a trust.
Trump’s legal team insists that Congress has no legitimate reason to investigate these entities.
“The committees have never identified a single piece of legislation within their respective jurisdictions that they are considering,” the memo states. “The stated justification for their subpoenas, instead, is to investigate ‘potential foreign influence on the U.S. political process’ or the use of the financial system for ‘illicit purposes.’ But the information they seek long predates the president’s election to office, reaches well beyond transactions associated with foreign parties, and encompasses reams of account records for entities, individuals, children, and spouses who have never even been implicated in any probe.”
The list of Trump companies hit with subpoenas hints at why House Democrats may have cast such a wide net.
The Trump shell companies being scrutinized include four Delaware corporations, one of which—Trump Acquisitions, LLC—signed the letter of intent on Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign season. The New York-based DJT Holdings, LLC, also a party to the lawsuit, is behind much of Trump’s international real estate dealings from Panama City, Panama to Istanbul, Turkey.
Trump’s federal lawsuit in Manhattan does not address the subpoenas leveled against his companies by state attorneys general at Deutsche. Prosecutors in Maryland and Washington have subpoenaed the German lender in connection with their lawsuit claiming that Trump’s business empire routinely violates the emoluments clause to the Constitution, barring holders of public office from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
At a press conference on Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters that Deutsche has been responsive to her subpoenas following up on testimony by Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen.
Bound for prison on Monday, Cohen previously told Congress that Trump inflated his wealth in order to secure loans from Deutsche, one of the few major banks that continued to lend to the president following his bankruptcies in the 1990s.
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