WASHINGTON — The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court on Monday to throw out or at least temporarily halt a lawsuit that accuses President Trump of illegally benefiting from his family’s business, seeking to block more than three dozen subpoenas for documents from the Trump Organization, the president’s trust and other entities. The Justice Department acted in response to recent rulings by a federal district judge in a suit brought by the District of Columbia and the State of Maryland. The suit alleges that Mr. Trump has violated the Constitution’s anti-corruption clauses, in part by accepting payments from foreign governments that patronize the Trump International Hotel, just blocks from the White House. “The complaint rests on a host of novel and fundamentally flawed constitutional premises, and litigating the claims would entail intrusive discovery into the president’s personal financial affairs and the official actions of his administration,” the Justice Department argued in a 40-page petition to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Source: New York Times December 17, 2018 21:00 UTC