Donald Trump's lawyers are taking their flimsy legal argument back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals after District Court Judge Amit Mehta ordered Trump's accounting firm to turn over a decade of his financial records to the House Oversight Committee. As Politico notes, Trump will need "urgent relief" after Judge Mehta not only ruled against him but declined to stay the order due to the baseless legal position Trump’s attorneys had advanced. They argued, as they have across the board, that Congress had no legitimate "legislative purpose" in seeking Trump's financial records, and they effectively got their butts handed to them on a platter, in expedited fashion. Without an immediate stay from the three-judge panel likely to hear Trump’s appeal, the accounting firm, Mazars LLP, could be forced to release the records to the Oversight Committee by next week.
If Trump fails with the panel on appeal, his attorneys could seek review by the full bench or head straight to the Supreme Court. But remember, Mehta declined to stay his own ruling precisely because he deemed it unlikely their argument could prevail in any higher court.
The pace at which this all unfolds will be partially up to the D.C. Circuit Court, which will set the briefing schedule. Judge Mehta expedited the briefing and argument schedule in his court. Oh hey, did we mention that chief judge of the D.C. Circuit is Merrick Garland—the guy President Obama nominated to the Supreme Court but was never even given a hearing by the lawless Republican-controlled Senate?
Trump responded to Mehta's ruling Monday with his usual presidential decorum, calling it "crazy," because no one knows the law like a corrupt wannabe dictator who consumes information through a steady diet of Fox News and brightly colored charts.
Attorneys arguing on behalf of the House of Representatives liked Mehta's ruling so much, they filed a copy of it with a court in New York City, where Trump is trying to block House investigators from accessing his financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One. That’s legalese for, Just FYI, Trump's argument got laughed out of a federal court, ICYMI.
