Trump lawyers adopt Jim Jordan’s playbook to fight Dem oversight

Rep. Jim Jordan has frequently defended President Donald Trump on cable news and gone to the mat for him on Capitol Hill. Now, the Ohio Republican’s hard-line playbook is making its way into federal court.

Trump’s outside legal team is taking cues from Jordan, adopting many of his arguments and even asking a federal judge to obtain documents from Jordan in order to build their legal case against Democrats’ myriad investigations targeting the president.

It’s an extraordinary move that underscores the alignment between Trump’s attorneys, who are advancing a restrictive view of Congress’ oversight authority, and Republicans, who are broadly resisting Democrats’ attempts to investigate alleged crimes committed by the president.

At a federal court hearing on Tuesday, at which a judge heard arguments over whether Trump could block a congressional subpoena for his financial records, the president’s top outside counsel, William Consovoy, asked the judge for extra time so that he could consult with Jordan about providing documents that could buttress the president’s case. Trump filed a federal lawsuit last month in his personal capacity seeking to scrap the panel’s subpoena to accounting firm Mazars USA for eight years worth of Trump’s financial documents.

And in an initial court filing seeking to invalidate the subpoena, Consovoy invoked Jordan’s name five times and quoted several passages from his letters to House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) accusing Democrats of trying to “embarrass President Trump” with “partisan attacks.”