The House can now move ahead with subpoenas seeking years of President Donald Trump’s financial records. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo congress Judge sides with Democrats in Trump bank subpoena fight

NEW YORK — A federal judge on Wednesday allowed the House to move ahead with subpoenas seeking years of President Donald Trump’s financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, dealing the second blow in a matter of days to Trump's legal strategy of stonewalling Democrats’ mounting investigations.

U.S. District Court Judge Edgardo Ramos rejected a request by Trump and his family to block the subpoenas issued by Democrats on the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees. The subpoenas seek documents including tax returns, evidence of suspicious activity and, in the case of Deutsche Bank, any internal communications regarding Trump and his ties to foreign individuals.


Trump will challenge the ruling. “We will be filing a timely appeal with the Second Circuit,” said Jay Sekulow, a personal attorney for the president.

The ruling by Ramos, an Obama appointee, followed a landmark decision on Monday by another federal judge, Amit Mehta, who said the House Oversight Committee could proceed with a subpoena of Trump records held by accounting firm Mazars USA. Trump is appealing that ruling as well.

"Another day, another very important ruling. Different judge, same opinion," Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said after Ramos's decision. "The Trump legal arguments are without merit – raise no serious legal questions and speed is of the essence."

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The court decisions come as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tries to quell a growing push within her caucus to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump. Pelosi has made the case that moving forward with impeachment without Republican backing could hurt Democrats and that they should plow ahead with investigations in the meantime.

House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who issued the Deutsche Bank subpoena, is one of the most vocal advocates for impeaching Trump.

Trump and his children sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One last month to block the House subpoenas, which the president's legal team described as too broad, lacking a legitimate legislative purpose and primarily designed to cause the president political damage.

"After two years of an expensive and comprehensive Witch Hunt, the Democrats don’t like the result and they want a DO OVER,” Trump said on Twitter Wednesday morning, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. "In other words, the Witch Hunt continues!”

The House Financial Services and Intelligence committees intervened in Trump’s attempt to block the subpoenas.

During the court hearing Wednesday, Ramos denied a request by Trump's lawyer, Patrick Strawbridge, for a stay of the decision, noting that the committees had already agreed to suspend the subpoenas while the case proceeded.

The judge said the committees' subpoenas were "likely lawful" and had "a legitimate legislative purpose."

"Put simply, the power of Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process," he said.

House lawyers argued in court that the committees had broad authority to proceed with their probes and that the findings would help inform legislation to bolster anti-money laundering rules and safeguard the U.S. political process. They asked the court to dismiss Trump's lawsuit.

Ramos was unpersuaded by the Trump legal team’s arguments in favor of blocking the subpoenas, saying that any alleged “ulterior motives” of the committees did not impede their investigative powers and that the propriety of those motives was not a question left to the courts.

He went on to disregard the concern raised by Trump's lawyers that the information once released would pose irreparable harm to the president and his family.

“Any delay in proceeding may result in … irreparable harm to the committees,” he said, given the turnover in Congress because of elections.

In a surprise, Strawbridge at one point suggested that Trump was willing to negotiate the scope of the subpoenas.

“We remain open, reasonable and willing to discuss,” he said.

House general counsel Douglas Letter scoffed at the offer.

Letter argued that the committees’ investigations were urgent to ensure the integrity of the financial system and to find out whether the government at its highest levels could be subject to foreign influence.

Deutsche Bank has lent Trump hundreds of millions of dollars over the years and has been a target for Democrats throughout his presidency. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Deutsche Bank and Capital One tried to stay neutral as the case played out.

Deutsche Bank said in a statement Wednesday that it remained committed to providing “appropriate information to all authorized investigations” and will abide by a court order regarding the probes.

Deutsche Bank has been a target for Democrats since the earliest days of Trump’s presidency. The German bank lent Trump hundreds of millions of dollars over the years for property development and has faced scrutiny for its role in Russian money laundering.

Democrats have questioned why the bank was willing to lend to Trump when other banks weren’t and whether it served as a conduit for Russian influence over the president.

Allegations in a recent New York Times story that Deutsche Bank quashed reports of potential suspicious activity tied to Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner attracted even more scrutiny to the lender.

Senate Democrats in a hearing on Tuesday hammered a top Treasury Department official over the story, urging him to take action.

Meanwhile, attorneys for Trump, the accounting firm Mazars and House Oversight Committee Democrats filed a joint motion Wednesday with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals requesting an expedited hearing on their case — though even that speedy schedule would delay production of Trump’s financial documents until late summer at the earliest.

The agreed-upon timetable, which still needs the judges' signoff, would see several rounds of briefs filed over the next eight weeks, followed by oral arguments “as soon as the court deems practicable.”

Under the approach put before the D.C. Circuit, the Democrats said they would agree to suspend the deadlines in the subpoena for production of the financial documents while the appeal worked its way through the court. Mazars, meantime, would still keep working to collect and prepare documents but wouldn’t turn any over until the judges’ render an opinion.

Should the judges reject their proposed schedule, the Trump lawyers said they’d file an emergency motion to stay Mehta’s decision pending the appeal. Democrats also said they’d agree to suspend the production schedule in the subpoena until there’s a ruling.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings on Wednesday voiced confidence that lawmakers would continue to prevail in the courts.

He said Judge Mehta's ruling on Monday would be difficult for any court to overturn.

"He basically said it was a slam dunk," Cummings said. "I have a hope and believe that the courts will, even if they are Trump appointments or Republican appointments, whoever, I think the courts will look at this and say wait a minute, just like Judge Mehta did, say that there’s a role for the Congress and the role is clear."

Cummings said that since the Mazars ruling, the president's legal team has been negotiating productively to expedite the appeals process, which Cummings called "a good sign."

"I think the president’s hope was to either delay it or get it to the Supreme Court and thinking that the Supreme Court would then rule in his favor," Cummings said. "When you look at the Mazars case, I think it would not shock me if the Supreme Court went the same way."

Kyle Cheney and Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.