Pedestrians pass in front of Trump Tower in New York City, December 2018. Photo: Allison Joyce/Bloomberg 

A coalition of major media outlets, including The Associated Press and CNN, filed a motion Wednesday with a federal appellate court to force Deutsche Bank to publicly disclose which tax returns it has on file from the family of, or entities related to, President Donald Trump.

The motion comes two weeks after Deutsche Bank told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit it was in possession of the tax returns of at least one Trump-related business entity or family member, but redacted specific information.

The media outlets, represented by attorneys from law firm Ballard Spahr in Manhattan, argued in their motion to intervene that both the First Amendment and the common law should allow an unredacted version of the filing from Deutsche Bank to be made public.

Rejecting their request to make that information openly available would set a dangerous precedent, the media organizations argued.

"There is no genuine privacy concern implicated by Deutsche Bank confirming what is already widely understood—that it has copies of certain of the president's or his affiliates' financial records—but it would set a disturbing precedent to allow redactions of such rudimentary facts to go unchallenged, particularly in a case involving a sitting president," they argued.

The motion was brought by the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post, according to the filing.

It's unclear, at this point, which tax returns Deutsche Bank has on hand from Trump, his family or an entity that they control. The bank, in its filing, did not reveal whether it had the tax filings of multiple individuals or entities, or if those documents belong to one person or company. 

Those filings could be subject to a request from Democrats in Congress, who subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and Capital One earlier this year for documents related to the finances of Trump and his three eldest children: Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump.

The two banks were targeted for the subpoenas because they were known to have done business with the Trump family in recent years, particularly Deutsche Bank. Capital One has said it doesn't have any of the tax returns in question.

The inquiry did not specifically seek the tax filings of those individuals, but it's been argued that the breadth of the subpoena would include those documents. An attorney for the U.S. House of Representatives has said the subpoenas were part of a broader effort to investigate money laundering and foreign influence on the U.S. government.

Attorneys for Trump wrote in a recent filing that, even if the bank has those filings, the subpoenas wouldn't require them to be disclosed to Congress.

The subpoenas are currently under review by the Second Circuit after U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District of New York declined to grant a preliminary injunction against them earlier this year.

Deutsche Bank, represented by Raphael Prober from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C., told the Second Circuit last month that it couldn't publicly say which tax filings it had because they were the personal, sensitive information of a customer and it was bound by contractual obligations not to disclose those documents without redacting them.

The media outlets, in their motion Wednesday, argued that an unredacted version of the filing should be made available because Deutsche Bank had not met its burden of showing why the information should be kept private, and because the filing is of significant interest to the public.

"The ultimate decision in this case and the information requested by the court to reach its decision are of extraordinary public importance, and as demonstrated above, Deutsche Bank has not identified any valid, applicable privacy interest, much less demonstrated why any such personal privacy interest would outweigh the exceptional public interests at stake," they wrote.

The First Amendment, they argued, provides a right of access to judicial documents, particularly in cases as significant to the public as this, where the president is suing to block the disclosure of his financial information to Congress.

A court can allow documents to be sealed, the media outlets said, but only after making specific, on-the-record findings that a party has met its burden to justify that outcome. 

In this case, they wrote, the public's right to the information that was redacted from Deutsche Bank's filing outweighs the privacy concerns previously cited.

"As Deutsche Bank has not identified a substantial risk to a compelling government interest, it cannot meet its burden to overcome the public's right of access, and the redacted names should be unsealed forthwith," they wrote.

The other prong of their argument for having the names unsealed rests in common law, they said. Since the filing from Deutsche Bank will be used by the Second Circuit in its decision on whether to affirm the district court's ruling, they argued that the public has a right to access the information.

"The question of which specific entities or individuals—from among a group whose identities are already publicly known—will be the subject of this court's adjudication is of substantial value to those monitoring the court and the execution of its duties in this case," they wrote.

The coalition is asking the Second Circuit for permission to intervene in the lawsuit, and to have the unredacted version of Deutsche Bank's filing unsealed for public view.

Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy, is representing Trump before the Second Circuit. Neither he nor Prober, the attorney for Deutsche Bank, immediately responded to a request for comment Wednesday.

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