No, the House Democrats didn’t just cave on Donald Trump’s Deutsche Bank records

| 7:30 pm EDT May 25, 2019
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Today the House Democrats reached a deal with Donald Trump’s lawyers, agreeing not to actively pursue Trump’s financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One while the matter is being settled in appeals court. Some major news outlets are misreporting this as the Democrats having caved, or having given up on the subpoena – but that’s not at all what happened here.

House Democrats can’t realistically enforce the subpoena while Donald Trump is appealing it in court anyway. By giving up their theoretical right to tilt at windmills while the appeals process is playing out, the Democrats are giving up literally nothing in real world terms. In return, Trump’s attorneys have agreed to sign off on a joint request for an expedited appeals court ruling.

This is interesting, as Trump’s strategy up to now has been to try to drag the legal process out for as long as possible. He knows he’s going to lose the legal battle in the end, but the longer he can drag this out, the longer these two banks have to wait before they’re allowed to hand over his financial records. The question here is why Trump’s lawyers would agree to such a one-sided deal in which they gain literally nothing. The only explanation we can think of is that Trump’s team expects the appeals court to expedite the ruling anyway, so they don’t feel like they’re giving up anything either.

In any case, this is a classic instance of a non-story being inaccurately spun for ratings. The Resistance is understandably inclined to respond in loud negative fashion at any sign that House Democrats are caving to Trump on anything. Accordingly, the media sometimes runs with false narratives like this one on comparatively slow news days.