Washington Post: “Former president Donald Trump has offered to give House Democrats a peek at financial statements related to his complex business empire from before his 2016 presidential bid and eight years of contracts with his accounting firm, but refused to divulge more sensitive source data or internal communications, his lawyers told a federal judge Thursday. The disclosure of the offer, made in late June in unsuccessful court-ordered mediation, came as Trump urged a federal judge in Washington to end a stalemate and toss out a 2019 House subpoena for eight years of his financial records, calling the congressional demand unconstitutional and unenforceable. ‘The Committee on Oversight and Reform doesn’t need a decade’s worth of the former president’s sensitive financial information to legislate new financial regulations for all future presidents,’ attorney Cameron T. Norris argued., saying lawmakers have plenty of power to gather data from other sources to overhaul disclosure rules.”
“Trump is no longer president, but the threat to the separation-of-powers if the court rules otherwise remains, Norris said. Enforcing the subpoena could unconstitutionally weaken every future president in dealings with Congress, raising the prospect that once he or she leaves office, lawmakers could compel and post for the world to see their most sensitive data, Norris said. The fight over the subpoena for Trump’s records from 2011 to 2018 from accounting firm Mazars USA reached the Supreme Court last year, which ruled that congressional subpoenas seeking a president’s information must be ‘no broader than reasonably necessary’ and returned the question to lower courts to work out the standard. The battle is just one front in clashes over Trump’s tax information. After a separate Supreme Court ruling in March, Mazars turned over related documents to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D), whose prosecutors on Thursday charged the Trump Organization with a 15-year ‘scheme to defraud’ the government and its chief financial officer with grand larceny and tax fraud.”