PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP has been claiming he is the most transparent president in U.S. history. Any self-respecting U.S. citizen committed to the truth knows this is a lie.
Transparency and accountability are values upheld by the principles of checks and balances mandated by the U.S. Constitution so that not one person nor institution accorded with public trust may abuse power.
Yet the 45th president of the United States has been desperately doing everything to block all calls for him to come clean. Even worse, he orders government officials to ignore subpoenas to testify under oath before Congress in pursuit of the truth on the allegations of criminal intent, abuse of power and obstruction of justice as laid out by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
In addition to these are subpoenas by the courts to investigate cases referred by Mueller to the judiciary outside of the purview of the mandate given to him in the Russia probe. It revealed more cases of alleged campaign finance violations, cover-ups, use of the Trump Foundation for his family’s personal gain and benefit, defrauding and scamming the government in attempts to pay his equitable dues in taxes, and so much more.
Trump likewise failed to release his tax returns, unable to beat the deadline given to his appointed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who, like his appointed Attorney General William Barr, appears to be serving Trump’s interest and not of the American people as mandated by law.
Recently, Trump, his family and the Trump Organization filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and Capital One in an attempt to block congressional subpoenas seeking their banking and financial records.
As the Associated Press (AP) reported, this lawsuit is in response to the House Financial Services and the House Intelligence committees that have subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and several other financial institutions as part of investigations into Trump’s finances.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff says the subpoenas are part of an investigation “into allegations of potential foreign influence on the U.S. political process.”
House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, says “the potential use of the U.S. financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern,” and says her committee is looking into those matters, including whether they pertain to Trump, according to the AP report.
The New York Times reported, that for more than 20 years, “Deutsche Bank lent Donald J. Trump billions of dollars, even as his tarnished financial record put him off limits for most of Wall Street.”
The Times further said Deutsche Bank is now putting the president on the defensive after its lawyers “have spent months cooperating with investigators from two Democratic-controlled congressional committees, which issued what one lawmaker called a ‘friendly subpoena’ to the bank in mid-April.”
The bank could end up sharing decades of his personal and corporate financial records, according to the Times.
The report said the prospect of having Trump’s financial records be finally revealed has “prompted Mr. Trump to file a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Monday [April 29] in an attempt to block Deutsche Bank and another financial company, Capital One, from sharing documents.”
Playing the victim role and branding all calls for accountability as “presidential harassment,” the lawsuit filed claimed “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.”
As TIME reported, Reps. Schiff and Waters issued a joint statement accusing the president of trying to “put off meaningful accountability as long as possible.”
“The meritless lawsuit filed today by President Trump to block duly authorized subpoenas to non-governmental entities is another demonstration of the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress’s constitutional oversight authority,” the statement said.
Has Trump really been transparent as he claims to be? What is he hiding? Does he think he is above the law in defying the Constitution he has sworn to uphold?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
