President Donald Trump and his family are suing Deutsche Bank and Capital One to block subpoenas issued by House Democrats seeking Trump’s financial records.
In the lawsuit filed Monday in New York, Trump’s lawyers argued that the subpoenas serve “no legitimate or lawful purpose.”
[…]
In a joint statement, House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said it was a “meritless lawsuit” that was not designed to succeed — but was "only designed to put off meaningful accountability as long as possible.
"As a private businessman, Trump routinely used his well-known litigiousness and the threat of lawsuits to intimidate others, but he will find that Congress will not be deterred from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities," they said.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, said in a statement that it was "committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations.”
[…]
The Oversight Committee said it needs the documents in order to corroborate testimony from former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who alleged that the president artificially inflated and deflated the value of his assets for his personal benefit.
During an explosive public hearing in February, Cohen disclosed copies of Trump’s financial statements which he said were turned over to Deutsche Bank as Trump was seeking a loan to place a bid on the Buffalo Bills NFL team. Those statements, according to Cohen, contained false information.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Attorney General William Barr will be “obstructing Congress” if he chooses not to appear before the House Judiciary Committee.
Barr is scheduled to testify Thursday about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, but is resisting the committee’s push to have staffers conduct a round of questioning.
Pelosi says the attorney general or any other witnesses can’t “tell the committee how to conduct its interviews.”
She adds, “The attorney general of the United States is not the president’s personal lawyer, and he should act as the attorney general of the United States and honor his responsibilities.”
A redacted version of Mueller’s report was released to the public April 19. Democrats have subpoenaed the Justice Department for the full report and the underlying evidence.
I’m adding this CNN reporting to highlight the following paragraph:
The lawsuit in New York claims that the subpoenas the House Intelligence Committee and House Financial Services Committee sent to Deutsche Bank and Capital One aren’t valid because they violate banking privacy law and they are not for shaping legislation. Yet at least one other court has said previously that claims like those can’t stop congressional subpoenas.
CNN is referring to Fusion GPS’s attempt to block TD Bank from turning over its financial records to Congress. They made the same arguments that Trump’s lawyers are making and they lost. Period. And it’s important to note that it was a Republican controlled House Committee that set this precedent. Now that the Democrats are in control, they have every right to take the same steps in their investigations of Trump’s finances. There is ample probable cause – for example, Michael Cohen’s testimony (backed up by documentation) that Trump committed insurance fraud and bank fraud.
Here’s some excerpts from the January, 2018, CNN article about Fusion GPS’s failed litigation to stop Republicans from obtaining its bank records:
… The financial records that Fusion GPS fought for months to keep out of the hands of Congress have been turned over, according to a new court filing.
TD Bank “has produced all remaining responsive documents” to the House Intelligence Committee under the terms of a confidential settlement, a lawyer for the House wrote Friday afternoon.
Fusion GPS had argued that handing over those 70 documents in response to a subpoena from the House committee’s Russia investigators could reveal its clients, hinder its business and step on its First Amendment rights. Fusion GPS said that once the committee had the documents, its clients’ names and financial details would be likely to leak.
Before the handover of documents Friday, a federal judge [Judge Richard Leon, U.S. District Court, DC] had disagreed with Fusion GPS’ protests, and the company pledged to appeal.
…
First Criminal Referral comes out of the House Intel Committee for Eric Prince. Congress believes he lied when he said the Seychelles meeting with the Russian financier happened by chance.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump.
“The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this,” Schiff said during a Washington Post Live event.
Among other things, Schiff pointed to a meeting that took place nine days before Trump took office between Prince and a Russian financier close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands.
Prince later told congressional officials examining Russia’s interference in the presidential election that the meeting happened by chance and was not taken at the behest of the incoming administration — testimony that congressional Democrats now think was false.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has hired Patrick Fallon, former chief of the FBI’s Financial Crimes Section, according to two sources familiar with the move.
It’s a significant hire that will bring expertise to the committee’s efforts to scrutinize President Donald Trump’s financial dealings. A committee source told The Daily Beast that Fallon started this week.
Schiff announced earlier this year that the committee will look at Trump’s finances to see if his personal interests are influencing his decisions as president. “That pertains to any credible allegations of leverage by the Russians or the Saudis or anyone else,” he said, according to CNN.
Frank Figliuzzi, former Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, called Fallon’s hiring significant.
“The fact that the Committee has hired someone at the former senior executive service level from within the FBI’s Financial Crimes Section is significant, and to me denotes an effort to apply significant resources to examining and analyzing financial findings,” Figliuzzi said. “By the time you got to the head of the Financial Crimes section, you would have substantial white collar crime and global financial crime experience, both at the street level and the supervisory level. And his role at headquarters would have had him overseeing the bulk of all financial crime cases in the FBI.”
No! Thank you for maintaining this thread! Super useful and important! 
You’re welcome. I made it for all to use. House Committee news is really confusing but it’s where the action is right now.
I’m hoping to update the header every Tuesday or as I have time but keep the thread below it breaking news 24/7.
Democrats in Congress can move ahead with their lawsuit against President Trump alleging that his private business violates the Constitution’s ban on gifts or payments from foreign governments, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The decision in Washington from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan adopted a broad definition of the anti-corruption ban and could set the stage for Democratic lawmakers to begin seeking information from the Trump Organization. The Justice Department can try to delay or block the process by asking an appeals court to intervene.
The lawsuit is one of two landmark cases against Trump relying on the once-obscure emoluments clauses of the Constitution.
In a case brought in Maryland by the attorneys general of D.C. and Maryland, Justice Department lawyers representing the president have succeeded in temporarily blocking subpoenas for financial records and other documents related to Trump’s D.C. hotel.
[…]
Led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the Democrats filed their suit last year asking the court to force Trump to stop accepting payments they consider violations of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause. They say the provision was designed to guard against undue influence by foreign governments by barring any “emolument” — meaning a gift or payment — without prior approval from Congress.
House Judiciary Chair Nadler’s statement with regards to the news that Barr had received a letter from Mueller expressing that Barr had misled the public in his conclusion on Obstruction of Justice.
“The Washington Post reports that Special Counsel Mueller wrote to Attorney General Barr last month to object to the Attorney General’s summary of his work because it ‘did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance’ of the investigation. The Special Counsel was concerned, among other things, that the Attorney General’s mischaracterization ‘threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.’ He also requested that the Department release the introduction and executive summaries prepared by the Special Counsel’s team — as I did at the time.
“The Special Counsel’s concerns reflect our own. The Attorney General should not have taken it upon himself to describe the Special Counsel’s findings in a light more favorable to the President. It was only a matter of time before the facts caught up to him.
“Attorney General Barr also should not have withheld this letter from Congress for as long as he has. I have demanded a copy from the Department of Justice. I have asked that it be delivered no later than 10:00 tomorrow morning.
“The Attorney General has expressed some reluctance to appear before the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday. These reports make it that much more important for him to appear and answer our questions. The Department of Justice has also been reluctant to confirm a date for Special Counsel Mueller to testify. Given this evening’s reports, I will press the Department to schedule that hearing without delay.”
House Democrats tell The Daily Beast they’ve been told Special Counsel Robert Mueller is willing to testify before them about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election but that the Department of Justice has been unwilling to set a date for it to happen.
The impasse comes as lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated over Attorney General Bill Barr’s handling of the release of the Mueller probe and as other Trump World figures have declined to appear before congressional committees.
Shortly after it was reported on Tuesday nightthat Mueller had written and called Barr to complain that he not fully represented his findings, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) sent out a statement demanding both appear before his committee and revealing that he had been stonewalled so far.
“The Attorney General has expressed some reluctance to appear before the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday,” Nadler said. “These reports make it that much more important for him to appear and answer our questions. The Department of Justice has also been reluctant to confirm a date for Special Counsel Mueller to testify.”
**Nadler had sent a letter to DOJ following the department’s release of the Mueller report asking that Mueller appear for questioning no later than May 23**. Two sources familiar with the conversations said the Judiciary Committee has been in regular contact with DOJ about setting a date for that Mueller’s testimony and that those conversations were ongoing as of this week. Committee sources said that it was their impression that Mueller was willing to testify to discuss his findings though it was unclear whether that would take place in public or behind closed doors.
But the DOJ has, according to multiple sources, not agreed to a date, citing Mueller’s continued status as a department employee—since the Special Counsel serves under the attorney general.
Senator Hirono’s letter asking the IG to investigate Barr.
Barr’s going to be brought to task about his conduct, even BEFORE the public became aware of Mueller’s letter to Barr.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called on Attorney General William Barr to resign after it was revealed that special counsel Robert Mueller believed the chief law enforcement officer publicly misrepresented the findings of the Russia probe.
Schiff’s appeal stems from his belief that Barr last month “willingly misled the Congress” when he told members of a House Appropriation subcommittee he did not know what was behind reports that the special counsel’s team was frustrated with the four-page memo he sent to Congress summing up Mueller’s report almost a month ahead of its release.
Attorney General Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee on Mueller Report Attorney General William Barr testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Mueller report.
Watch 
Recess until 12:50pm E
And they’re back. Sorry I’m a little late.
The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to allow staff to question Attorney General William Barr during his hearing on the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, raising the possibility that he won’t show up.
Barr warned Democrats days ago that he won’t appear before the committee, scheduled for Thursday morning, if they stick to the format.
"I don’t know what he’s afraid of," said House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat.
- Attorney General William P. Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not misrepresent the report by Robert S. Mueller III, despite Mr. Mueller’s complaint that the attorney general’s initial public letter describing the investigation’s findings did not capture its full context.
- In a letter from the special counsel to the attorney general, released on Wednesday, Mr. Mueller wrote that Mr. Barr’s summary of his office’s work failed to capture “the context, nature and substance” of his report and had left the public confused about “critical aspects of the results.”
- Mr. Barr said that President Trump did not obstruct justice by telling his White House counsel to have the special counsel removed from office.
- Democrats pressed Mr. Barr on why he had not publicly acknowledged concerns about his original summary when asked about them and why he asserted that Mr. Trump had cooperated fully with the investigation when he tried to thwart it.
- The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to allow staff lawyers to question Mr. Barr at a hearing scheduled for Thursday. Mr. Barr has said he will not appear under that format.
Barr is off his rocker, he came out of retirement for this?! We don’t need more Honey badgers in politics. 
Can’t watch this anymore, I’m just yelling at my iPad every time Barr lies or evades actually answering the question. 