Tipsheet

That Judge Who Said Trump Must Surrender His Tax Returns Has An Interesting Donor History

Okay, so we all know the hammer the judiciary dropped on the Trump administration last night, right? A federal judge sided with House Democrats over their subpoenas over President Trump’s tax returns. Democrats want six years worth of returns, including those from the president’s businesses. The subpoenas targeted an accounting firm and to no one’s surprise this Obama-appointed judge sided with Democrats (via NYT):

President Trump’s accounting firm must turn over his financial records to Congress, a Federal District Court judge ruled on Monday, rejecting his legal team’s argument that lawmakers had no legitimate power to subpoena the files.

But Mr. Trump vowed that his legal team would appeal rather than permit the firm, Mazars USA, to comply with the subpoena and the ruling, so the legal fight is far from over.

The ruling by the judge, Amit P. Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, was an early judicial test of the president’s vow to systematically stonewall “all” subpoenas by House Democrats, stymieing their ability to perform oversight of Mr. Trump and the executive branch after winning control of the chamber in last year’s midterm elections.

Mr. Trump’s legal team, led by William S. Consovoy, had argued that the House Committee on Oversight and Reform had no legitimate legislative purpose in seeking Mr. Trump’s financial records and was just trying to dig up dirt — like finding out whether the president broke any laws — for political reasons, so the subpoena exceeded its constitutional authority.

Oh, and did we forget that Judge Mehta was an Obama donor as well. It’s time to play everyone’s favorite game, folks: ‘If this were a Republican donor, the media would’…certainly, cover it like some corrupt bargain. But alas, that’s not how things operate in the Democrat-media complex, where two sets of rules govern America’s two dominant political philosophies. Once gets pilloried for stupid crap, while the other can be corrupt, commit crimes, lie, cheat, steal, and totally get away with it—it must be nice to be a Democrat.