President Donald Trump. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/APtrump

Last week's federal court decision that ordered President Donald Trump's personal accounting firm to disclose his financial information to Congress may actually help him in a separate effort to block federal lawmakers from obtaining similar documents from Deutsche Bank.

Trump's attorneys wrote in a new filing that the ruling, handed down by the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, should be interpreted to strike down a different set of federal subpoenas.

"Notably, [the D.C. Circuit] agreed with the President on the governing legal principles," Trump's attorneys wrote. "It also explained why the subpoenas here are unconstitutional."

He's represented in the litigation by Patrick Strawbridge, an attorney with Consovoy McCarthy in Boston.

The filing was in response to a letter sent last week to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals from attorneys for the U.S. House of Representatives, who argued that the D.C. Circuit's ruling actually supported their subpoenas to Deutsche Bank. 

"This Court should join the D.C. Circuit in upholding the validity of the subpoenas at issue here," wrote Douglas Letter, an attorney for the U.S. House.

He quoted a sentence from the D.C. Circuit's decision, which essentially held that the subpoenas issued to Trump's personal accounting firm were valid based on the reasoning behind those requests. Trump is expected to appeal the ruling.

"Contrary to the President's arguments, the Committee possesses authority under both the House Rules and the Constitution to issue the subpoena, and Mazars must comply," D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote.

Those subpoenas were sent to Trump's personal accounting firm, Mazars, earlier this year by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which was looking into whether Trump had mischaracterized the value of his assets to financial institutions and whether federal financial disclosure laws should be changed.

The subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank in April were sent for a different purpose, according to previous statements by attorneys for the House.

Those subpoenas are currently under review by the Second Circuit, which is weighing whether to block Deutsche Bank from complying with them. They were issued earlier this year by Congress to seek the financial information of Trump and members of his family.

An attorney for the House has said the subpoenas sent to Deutsche Bank were part of a broader effort to investigate money laundering and foreign influence on the U.S. government. Federal lawmakers have not been more specific. 

Attorneys for Trump wrote in their new filing that the D.C. Circuit's decision held that Congress could only seek Trump's financial information for a narrowly tailored investigation, not a broader policy objective. 

They pointed to a section of the D.C. Circuit's ruling that opined on the breadth of subpoenas issued by Congress in the context of a president's personal information.

"Just as a congressional committee could not subpoena the President's high school transcripts in service of an investigation into K-12 education, nor subpoena his medical records as part of an investigation into public health, it may not subpoena his financial information except to facilitate an investigation into presidential finances," the D.C. Circuit wrote.

Trump's attorneys said that part of the decision supported their argument that the subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank were an unlawful exercise of congressional power.

"Exactly right," they wrote. "Which is why the Committees cannot subpoena Plaintiffs' records to conduct a 'case study' of the banking industry, or to investigate broad election or counterintelligence reforms."

That's been a common argument from Trump's attorneys against the various investigations from Congress into his finances. They've regularly said that Congress has exceeded its authority and positioned itself, unconstitutionally, as a law enforcement agency.

In the case of Deutsche Bank, it's unclear, as of now, what financial information of Trump or his family Congress could obtain from the subpoenas. 

It was predicted, until recently, that the bank could have copies of Trump's tax returns, which Democrats have sought since he took office. Trump broke decades of tradition by refusing to release his tax filings to the public during the 2016 election.

But, as it turns out, Democrats will have to look elsewhere if they want to get their hands on Trump's filings. A decision from the Second Circuit handed down last week revealed that Deutsche Bank doesn't have Trump's tax returns.

That came to light after a coalition of media groups had asked the court to make public a sealed document filed by Deutsche Bank that contained the identities of individuals whose tax returns they have. That request was rejected by the federal appellate court.

Representatives for Letter and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to comment on the letter filed by Trump's attorneys this week.

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