(Bloomberg) -- A lawyer for former President Donald Trump told a federal appeals court that allowing the House to subpoena his financial records and show them “to the whole world” will give Congress too much power over occupants of the White House.

“The more you let Congress do to a former president, the more leverage they have over a current president, because they can make this threat,” Trump’s lawyer, Cameron Norris, told a panel of three judges during a hearing Monday in Washington over a subpoena for documents by the House Oversight Committee. 

Norris was responding to a question from Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who noted the House committee was trying to find out if its current process for reviewing the potential conflicts of interest of incoming presidents needed to be improved, in light of the Trump Organization lease for the Old Post Office government building in Washington, which he converted into a luxury hotel.

“I’m trying to find out why that isn’t a legitimate inquiry by Congress,” Jackson said.

Trump and House Democrats both appealed in August after a district judge issued an order requiring the former president’s accountants at Mazars USA to turn over some of his financial records while protecting others from disclosure.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta called on Mazars to turn over documents related to the hotel lease, as well as records that could shed light on whether Trump received gifts or compensation from foreign governments in violation of the Constitution’s so-called emoluments clauses.

The dual appeals will prolong a legal battle that began in 2019, when Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform issued a subpoena demanding eight years of Trump’s financial records. Trump fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which punted it back to the lower courts in Washington.

The high court ordered new scrutiny to determine whether the subpoenas were clearly focused on valid legislative goals and didn’t excessively burden the president.

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