Decade of Decadence

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want ten years of Trump's taxes, according, well, to Republicans on the committee who are trying to sandbag the move.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee is seeking 10 years of President Donald Trump’s financial records from an accounting firm, two Republicans on the panel revealed on Wednesday.

The Democrat-led committee asked Mazars USA, a tax and accounting firm, for documents related to Trump’s finances, with a focus on the president’s effort to bid on the Buffalo Bills, according to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the Oversight panel, and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a senior member of the committee.

It appears to reflect an effort by the committee to follow up on former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony before the panel last month. Cohen told lawmakers that Trump inflated his personal net worth as he sought to buy the NFL team.

Jordan and Meadows, two of the president’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, made the revelations in a letter to Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in which they alleged that the request for such information about Trump “appears to depart from responsible and legitimate oversight,” and is intended “solely to embarrass President Trump and to advance the relentless Democrat attacks upon the Trump administration.”

Their letter comes after Trump and his allies have claimed vindication after Attorney General William Barr informed congressional leaders on Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation was unable to establish that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russians during the 2016 election.

The president and his supporters on Capitol Hill have called on Democrats to cease their investigations into the president, which they have long derided as politically motivated.

“We should not waste our limited resources and energies on matters that do not improve the operations of the federal government or better the lives of our constituents,” Jordan and Meadows wrote, calling Cummings’ investigation “an ill-conceived inquiry into the finances of President Trump when he was a private citizen.”

The lawmakers sent a separate letter to Victor Wahba, the chairman and chief executive officer of Mazars USA, stating that Cummings did not consult with the GOP side of the committee before request the documents on Trump’s finances.

Elijah Cummings is having none of it.

Cummings dismissed the Republicans’ letters.

“If they had their way, the committee would just close up shop for the next two years, but that is not what the American people elected us to do,” Cummings said. “We are following up on specific allegations regarding the president’s actions based on corroborating documents obtained by the committee, and we will continue our efforts to conduct credible, robust, and independent oversight.”

We'll see how this battle turns out, but I'm willing to bet that between the White House and SCOTUS that at the very least they can keep this tied up for months, if not well into 2021 and beyond.  Trump knows full well that his financial records for the last decade being made public would be his end, politically, as well as from a criminal standpoint.