This post has been updated.
House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) issued a subpoena to Mazars USA accounting firm for detailed information on President Trump’s financial history on Monday.
Cummings wrote in an April 12 memo to members of his committee that he planned on giving members until Monday at 11 a.m. to provide views before issuing the subpoena.
“The Committee has full authority to investigate whether the President may have engaged in illegal conduct before and during his tenure in office,” Cummings wrote in the memo.
He describes the scope of that investigation as “to determine whether he has undisclosed conflicts of interest that may impair his ability to make impartial policy decisions, to assess whether he is complying with the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution, and to review whether he has accurately reported his finances to the Office of Government Ethics and other federal entities.”
He sent a letter requesting the information from Mazars in March. The firm said that it would comply with a subpoena, according to a statement from Cummings earlier this month.
The committee’s investigation focuses on allegations made by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen that Trump altered the value of his assets for different purposes, ranging from purported attempts to lessen his tax liability to a quixotic venture at buying the Buffalo Bills.
The investigation could provide Democrats with a separate way to gain access to key Trump financial information, as House Ways and Means grapples with the Treasury Department’s attempts to stall the committee’s request for Trump’s tax returns.
In the subpoena, Cummings demands documents from 2011 to 2018 relating to Trump and seven of his companies.
Cummings seeks statements of financial condition, annual statements, periodic financial reports, and auditor’s reports that Mazars prepared for Trump.
The Oversight chair also demands “underlying, supporting, or source documents and records” related to the accountant’s work for Trump.
Cummings also seeks communications between Trump, the Trump Org, and David Bender, a Mazars accountant who reportedly had the Trump account.
The subpoena gives Mazars until April 29 to comply.
House Oversight members Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) revealed the existence of the probe into Mazars in a March 27 press release, accusing Cummings of overreach while sending a letter to Mazars advising the firm to ignore the request. In his memorandum today, Cummings lashed out at Meadows and Jordan, calling their actions “unprecedented” while saying that “such actions undermine the authority of the Committee and impair its investigations.”
In his February testimony before Cummings’s committee, Cohen accused Trump of inflating his assets during an attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills.
The request itself seeks records and statements from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, the Trump Organization Inc., the Trump Organization LLC, the Trump Corporation, DJT Holdings LLC, the Trump Old Post Office LLC, the Trump Foundation, and from related entities.
Read a copy of the memo that Rep. Cummings circulated to lawmakers below:
Correction: This post has been updated to reflect the timing of the planned subpoena.
