With the aim of preventing two banks from handing over his financial records to the US Congress, United States President Donald Trump filed legal cases against two banks.

The two banks – Deutsche Bank and Capital One, were issued subpoenas for information on Trump’s finances by Democrat-led committees, following which a lawsuit was filed by Trump.

The lawsuit has been joined by Trump’s three eldest children and the Trump Organisation. The legal case claims that no legitimate grounds are present in others for Trump’s business affairs.

They would not be deterred by the blocking attempt, said leading Democrats.

“We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations”, said a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman to the New York Times.

No immediate comment from Capital One was however available.

The aim of the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in New York, is to prevent the two banks from adhering to the subpoenas issued by the Democrat-controlled Congress. Trump family’s financial dealings are being investigated by the Democrat-controlled US Congress.

Both banks are involved with Mr Trump’s real estate projects.

“[They] were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the president and his family,” alleges the lawsuit filed by Trump. “No grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one”, it further says.

The Democrats are hoping “they will stumble upon something they can expose publicly and use as a political tool against the President,” the filing also says.

Earlier this month, one of the Trump Organisation’s major lenders – Germany’s Deutsche Bank, along with a number of other financial institutions were issued subpoenas by the US House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees. The aim of the committees was to get hold of documents and materials that can establish a longstanding relationship between the Trump and his family and the banks.

The subpoenas were part of an investigation “into allegations of potential foreign influence on the US political process,” said representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The lawsuit was described as “meritless” by Schiff and fellow Democrat Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the Financial Services Commission. “[It shows] the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress’s constitutional oversight authority,” they said in a joint statement. “He will find that Congress will not be deterred from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities,” it adds.

Requests by Democrats in the House of Representatives to the banks for providing them with the details of Trump’s finances were turned down by the banks in 2017 citing privacy laws.

It had also been reported that Deutsche Bank had also been ordered for providing records of Trump’s accounts by special counsel Robert Mueller in that very year. Mueller was the lead investigator into alleged collusion of the presidential campaign of Trump and Russia.

(Adapted from BBC.com)

Categories: Economy & Finance, Geopolitics, Regulations & Legal, Strategy, Uncategorized