President Donald Trump sued to block Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp. from complying with congressional subpoenas targeting his bank records, escalating the president's showdown with Democratic lawmakers investigating his finances.
The legal maneuver follows reports from last week that the German bank had started the process of giving documents related to loans made to Trump and his businesses to the New York state attorney general, who is conducting her own probe.
"The subpoenas 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, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage," Trump's lawyers wrote in the introduction to the 13-page complaint filed Monday in Manhattan federal court.
Joining Trump as plaintiffs were his eldest children, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump, as well as the Trump Organization, the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and other entities affiliated with the president's family.
The complaint is very similar to one Trump filed last week in Washington to block Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, from getting records held by Trump's longtime accounting firm Mazars USA LLP.
