President Donald Trump, The Trump Organization and his family have filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and Capital One to try and block congressional subpoenas aimed at obtaining his private financial records.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the president, sons Donald Jr. and Eric and daughter Ivanka, along with The Trump Organization and Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and filed Monday in federal court in New York.
The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives’ subpoenas, led (of course) by Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., are part of what they’re calling an investigation “into allegations of potential foreign influence on the U.S. political process.”
Schiff said he wants to know whether Russians used laundered money for transactions with The Trump Organization.
The Trump family wants a federal judge to declare the subpoenas unlawful and unenforceable, and the lawsuit seeks to block the banks from disclosing the information and complying with the subpoenas.
“The subpoenas were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the President and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage,” the lawsuit said.
The suit also alleges the two committees led by Schiff and Waters “ignored the constitutional limits of Congress’ power to investigate” and the subpoenas “lack any legitimate legislative purpose.”
Eric Trump, the executive vice president of The Trump Organization, called the subpoenas “an unprecedented abuse of power and simply the latest attempt by House Democrats to attack the President and our family for political gain.”
Schiff and Waters called the lawsuit as “meritless.”
“(It shows) the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress’s constitutional oversight authority,” they said in a joint statement. “He will find that Congress will not be deterred from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities.”
Deutsche Bank, a German asset management firm, has lent Trump’s real estate organization millions of dollars over time, and said it will follow the law regarding the subpoenas.
“We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations,” Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Kerrie McHugh said in a statement Tuesday.