Washington: An Indian-American judge has rejected President Donald Trump's attempt to block House Democrats from getting his financial records, dealing an early setback to his administration in its legal battle with Congress. Judge Amit Mehta of the DC District Court on Monday decisively ruled in favour of the House Oversight Committee, whose chair, Elijah Cummings had subpoenaed 10 years' worth of Trump's financial records from accounting firm Mazars USA back in April. He told the accounting firm that it will need to turn over Trump's accounting records from before he was president to the Democratic-controlled House Oversight Committee, CNN reported.

In a 41-page opinion, Mehta of the DC District Court dealt a significant blow to the White House as he rejected Trump's attempt to block the committee's subpoena, asserting that Congress is well within its authority to investigate the president. Mehta's ruling is narrow in that it only deals with the House Oversight Committee's Mazars subpoena. But it's a key development in the larger, ongoing subpoena battle between Trump and Congress, because it gives Democrats legal ammunition when they go to court to enforce other outstanding subpoena requests. The Trump administration recently issued a blanket denial of all Democrats' subpoena requests, saying the information they seek is politically motivated. Democrats, on the other hand, say the administration's actions amount to an unprecedented attempt to block Congress from its constitutionally mandated oversight.