Oversight Committee Reaches Agreement to Get Trump’s Financial Records

On Thursday, House Democrats on the Oversight Committee announced that they have reached an agreement for Donald Trump’s former accounting firm to turn over “critical” financial documents that lawmakers say can help elucidate questions in their investigation into Trump’s finances and self-dealing.

Carolyn Maloney (D–New York), Chair of Oversight Committee announced in a statementAfter a long legal battle over Trump’s records, the lawmakers reached a deal with Mazars USA. In 2019, the committee had issued a subpoena.

The records will be “key” to the lawmakers’ “investigation into President Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and foreign financial ties,” Maloney said. “These documents will inform the Committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of former President Trump’s egregious conduct and ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain.”

One of the big questions around Trump’s business finances is whether or not he and the Trump Organization have committed fraud. The Oversight Committee is also looking into possible conflicts of interests Trump may have had while he was president, as well potential self-dealing cases.

In February, Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen testified that Trump regularly lies about his finances – deflating the value of his assets to dodge taxes while inflating their value when it “served his purposes.” The ex-president would do the latterCohen explained that Cohen did so for many reasons, including to obtain a large loan from a bank, add value to his brand or pure vanity.

Cohen shared portions of Trump’s financial documents with the committee, “which raised questions about President Trump’s representations on these forms and other financial disclosure documents, particularly relating to the President’s debts,” the committee wrote on Thursday. Cohen also testified to the fact that Trump and his business trust have reimbursed illegal payments in 2016 during his presidential run.

Before Cohen’s testimony, Mazars had broken up with the Trump Organization, saying that the company’s financial records from 2011 and 2020 “should no longer be relied upon,” as Mazars general counsel William Kelly said. This is a very important point. damning statementExperts say this is a sign of trouble for the former President and his businesses.

Mazars came to light as a result of a wide-spanning investigation into Trump’s businesses by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who earlier this year alleged that Trump’s family business has continually engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” financial practices in order to boost its bottom line.

Trump has filed several lawsuits in trying to conceal the financial records, including one to block the release of the Mazars documents to the House lawmakers and one to block James’s investigation, which was dismissedIn May, a federal judge ruled in favor of the petition.

The committee has already discovered some questionable financial practices in documents they have previously obtained from Mazars. In October, lawmakers discovered that Trump had been involved in these activities. had provided misleadingHis financial information was included in his application for a lease at a Trump International Hotel.

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