Baish| According to a letter obtained by Politico, Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee are looking for President Donald Trump to hand over 10 years of financial records stemming from an accounting firm.
The Democrat-led committee asked Mazars USA, a tax and accounting firm, for documents this month related to Trump’s personal finances, with a particular focus on his failed bid to purchase the Buffalo Bills before he became president.
It reflects an effort by the committee, under Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), to corroborate aspects of 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. He also claimed that Trump sought to reduce his tax burden by deflating the value of certain assets.
Cummings revealed in his letter to Mazars USA that the company signed the president’s financial statements, some of which Cohen disclosed to the committee and to the public ahead of his congressional testimony.
Shocking claims made by Michael Cohen during his public hearing in February are also to be investigated by House Democrats. Cummings gave Mazars an April 3 deadline to hand over all requested documents.
Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is currently the head Republican on the Oversight panel, as well as Republican Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who is also a senior member of the committee, brought the document request to light in a letter penned to Cummings this Wednesday. In the letter, the two allies of President Trump stated that asking for such information on the President “appears to depart from responsible and legitimate oversight,” and is meant “solely to embarrass President Trump and to advance the relentless Democrat attacks upon the Trump administration.”
The letter from Jordan and Meadows came after Trump and his people celebrated a huge victory this weekend following Attorney General William Barr’s announcement to congressional leaders that Robert Mueller and his team’s 22-month-long drawn out investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump has called for Democrats to stop investigating.
Jordan and Meadows wrote in their letter, “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.” They went on to call Cummings’ probe “an ill-conceived inquiry into the finances of President Trump when he was a private citizen.”
Meadows and Jordan sent a second letter to chairman and chief executive officer at Mazars USA, Victor Wahba. The letter said that Cummings had not consulted with the GOP prior to asking for the President’s financial documents.
The letter was dismissed by Cummings on Wednesday.
“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 stated. “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.”
He told Politico that the men “complain about every single thing I do.” He continued, “We’re just seeking the truth, that’s all.”
Politico reports that he “also indicated that the committee has in recent weeks intensified its efforts to corroborate the allegations Cohen presented to the committee when he testified publicly in February.”
“I think the thing that the press isn’t paying enough attention to is all the things that Cohen talked about when he came before us,” Cummings went on.
Jordan and Meadows also took issue on Wednesday with Cummings’ decision to seek documents from Diana Falzone, a former Fox News journalist who reportedly was working on a story before the 2016 election about Trump’s hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, but was told to stop looking into the matter. The lawmakers cited a column from a former editor at the network who defended the decision not to run the story at that time.
Cummings asked Falzone earlier this month for documents “relating to women alleging extramarital affairs with Donald Trump, payments by the president or anyone on his behalf to silence them, or any potential campaign finance violation.”
Despite Mueller’s determination on Trump-Russia collusion, congressional Democrats have vowed to continue their own investigations into the president, noting that Mueller specifically declined to weigh in on whether Trump obstructed justice. The House Judiciary Committee has been probing allegations of obstruction, abuses of power and corruption.
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