Amit Mehta, a U.S. federal judge, thrust himself into the public spotlight with an opinion earlier this month calling for President Trump’s accounting firm to turn over the president’s financial records.
Coincidentally, Mehta also appears to be an Obama-Biden donor—a detail conveniently missed by most of the establishment media, if not all the fluff pieces covering his history as a lawmaker.
Mehta’s effort wasn’t a one-off action against the Trump administration.
The D.C. District Court judge ruled in favor of the House Oversight Committee this Tuesday, providing what Vox calls the “Democrats’ first edge in their battle with the White House over congressional oversight.”
Following Mehta’s initial ruling, Trump bucked demands from Congress for the documents, suing the committee and blocking his accounting firm Mazars USA from complying.
Mehta previously denied an attempt by committee Democrats to get Trump’s hotel records, but this time, Mehta invoked the Watergate investigation to argue that “history has shown that congressionally-exposed criminal conduct” could give Congress the legitimacy it needed to remove a sitting president for criminal activity, or at the very least have him investigated for unlawful conduct without actually impeaching him.
GOP political strategist and former Special Assistant to the President, Andrew Surabian, did some digging into the federal judge and discovered the detail.
Trawling through OpenSecrets.org, the non-profit, non-partisan research group that keeps track of all the money that goes into lobbying and US elections, Surabian found that Mehta contributed thousands of dollars in donations to former president Barack Obama, dating as far back as 2007.
His most recent donations to the former president consisted of two $1,000 donations to Obama during the 2012 election, and contributions to Mitt Romney.
“Sure is interesting how the media has thus far missed this factoid, isn't it?” –– Andrew Surabian
“Now lets play a game & imagine that the same Judge was a Trump donor & ruled in his favor here... Something tells me this would be all over CNN tonight & the talking heads would be screaming, corruption!”
CNN’s coverage of Mehta consisted of a glowing biography detailing Mehta’s history notes that he was nominated by President Barack Obama to the DC District Court in 2014, but neglects to mention his donations to the former president’s campaign or his longstanding financial support for him.
It does, however, mention his love of hip-hop.
Democrats may argue that President Trump should have nothing to worry about if everything’s not on the up and up with his financial records, but such arguments don’t negate the fact that one’s right to privacy does not simply cease to exist because one becomes the President. If Trump loses the right to protect his own right to privacy, how can anyone else?
