Trump and His Businesses Sue House Democrats to Hide Accounting Records

On Monday, he said the Trump lawsuit was not a surprise given Mr. Trump’s “long history of trying to use baseless lawsuits to attack his adversaries,” but he argued that neither he nor his businesses had a “valid legal basis to interfere with this duly authorized subpoena from Congress.”

“This complaint reads more like political talking points than a reasoned legal brief, and it contains a litany of inaccurate information,” Mr. Cumming said, accusing the White House of across-the-board stonewalling of his committee.

After the subpoena was issued, lawyers representing Mr. Trump in the congressional inquiries, William S. Consovoy and Stefan Passantino, made arguments similar to those laid out in the lawsuit directly to Mazars, urging the company not to comply. Republicans on the Oversight committee have made similar arguments.

The suit and threats from the president’s private lawyers suggest that in the face of a hostile Congress, Mr. Trump is prepared to return to a go-to move from his years as a real estate mogul.

“The legal system is part of Trump’s strategy in almost everything that he does,” said Jack O’Donnell, a former president of the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City, who has since become a critic of his former boss. In his career in business, Mr. O’Donnell said, “he uses the law very tactically. He uses it to slow things down.”

During the 2016 election, USA Today calculated that Mr. Trump and his companies have been involved in 4,095 lawsuits over the past three decades, including defamation suits, trademark suits and employment litigation. Most have been either settled or dismissed, but only after churning out headlines.

“He uses suits to create agitation with his enemies,” said Jay Goldberg, a Manhattan-based attorney who represented Mr. Trump as a litigator for 15 years, through both of his divorces. “They have to get lawyers and there are built-in costs. These matters are usually settled or dismissed, but he uses it as a weapon.”