President Donald Trump and his family are suing Deutsche Bank and Capital One to block subpoenas issued by House Democrats seeking Trump’s financial records.

In the federal lawsuit filed Monday in New York, Trump’s lawyers argued that the subpoenas serve “no legitimate or lawful purpose.”

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“The subpoenas were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the President and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage,” the lawsuit contends. “No grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one.”

The lawsuit, seeking to invalidate subpoenas issued by the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees, is the latest escalation in Trump’s fight against mounting House investigations into his administration, presidential campaign and business empire. In recent days, Trump has vowed to fight all congressional subpoenas, accusing Democrats of trying to sully his presidency altogether.

In a joint statement, House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said it was a “meritless lawsuit” that was not designed to succeed — but was “only designed to put off meaningful accountability as long as possible.

“As a private businessman, Trump routinely used his well-known litigiousness and the threat of lawsuits to intimidate others, but he will find that Congress will not be deterred from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities,” they said.

Deutsche Bank, a German lender, said in a statement that it was “committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the president; his sons Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump; his daughter Ivanka Trump; and the Trump Organization. Lawyers representing the Trumps include Marc Mukasey, a former law firm partner of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.

In a statement, Mukasey and Patrick Strawbridge, who is also representing the Trumps in the case, said it was filed to “protect the privacy rights of the President, his family and their businesses.”

“Every citizen should be concerned about this sweeping, lawless, invasion of privacy,” they said. “We look forward to vindicating our clients’ rights in this matter.”

Monday’s lawsuit comes a week after the president asked a federal court to block the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s subpoena to accounting firm Mazars USA. The Democrat-led committee subpoenaed the firm to obtain eight years of Trump’s financial records.

The Oversight Committee said it needs the documents in order to corroborate testimony from former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who alleged that the president artificially inflated and deflated the value of his assets for his personal benefit.

During an explosive public hearing in February, Cohen disclosed copies of Trump’s financial statements which he said were turned over to Deutsche Bank as Trump was seeking a loan to place a bid on the Buffalo Bills NFL team. Those statements, according to Cohen, contained false information.

The committee has requested similar records from Capital One, which asked for a “friendly” subpoena before it could comply.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans have rushed to Trump’s defense amid the onslaught of investigations and subpoenas, claiming Democrats are abusing their authority to take down the president and eventually impeach him.

Democratic leaders remain opposed to launching impeachment proceedings against Trump — preferring instead to continue investigating the president for obstruction of justice allegations and financial misdeeds.

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this article.

President Donald Trump is calling on top immigration officials to take steps that toughen and accelerate the process for seeking asylum in the United States.

In a memo issued Monday evening, Trump ordered the development of regulations to bar certain asylum seekers from obtaining work authorization, impose fees on applications, speed up court decisions and limit access to other forms of relief.

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The measures — framed as a response to a surge of migrants at the southwest border — would represent a further escalation of Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. However, they will not immediately go into effect. Instead, the president called on the secretaries of the Homeland Security and Justice departments to “take all appropriate actions“ to implement the restrictive goals within 90 days.

Still, the prospective regulations called for in Monday’s memo — if and when they are issued — will almost certainly face court challenges.

The Trump administration has experimented with a range of policies to discourage the arrival of Central American families and children at the border, but without much discernible success. Federal courts have sidelined several high-profile initiatives, including an attempt late last year to deny asylum to people who cross between ports of entry.

Meanwhile, the number of border arrests — a metric used to estimate crossings — have risen in recent months. In March, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested nearly 93,000 people at the border, a monthly tally on par with higher immigration levels of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.

Kirstjen Nielsen resigned as Homeland Security secretary earlier this month as border arrests skyrocketed. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller reportedly pressed for a broader DHS shake-up to forge ahead with more aggressive immigration efforts.

Now the task of carrying out Trump’s agenda is left to acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who will testify before two separate congressional committees this week to defend the administration’s budget request for the coming year.

Trump regularly portrays immigrants arriving at the border as criminals and declared a national emergency in February to access roughly $6.7 billion for a border wall. The president said in the memo issued Monday that the latest measures would “strengthen asylum procedures to safeguard our system against rampant abuse.”

He followed up thememo with a post on Twitter about the dangers he sees at the border.

“The Coyotes and Drug Cartels are in total control of the Mexico side of the Southern Border,” he wrote. “They have labs nearby where they make drugs to sell into the U.S. Mexico, one of the most dangerous country’s in the world, must eradicate this problem now. Also, stop the MARCH to U.S.”

The push to toughen the asylum process followed news earlier in the day that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will send 320 more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help transport and care for migrants, bringing the total number of active-duty military personnel to just over 3,200.

The new deployment, at the request of DHS, is meant to free up Customs and Border Protection agents by ferrying migrants and “providing administrative support, including providing heating, meal distribution and monitoring the welfare of individuals in CBP custody,” Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

The Pentagon is also dispatching additional military lawyers to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“DoD personnel will not perform any law enforcement functions,” Davis stressed. “In any situation that requires DoD personnel to be in proximity to migrants, DHS law enforcement personnel will be present to conduct all custodial and law enforcement functions, and provide force protection of military personnel.”

In a separate move, ICE announced Monday that it would deploy more officers to the border to root out migrants fraudulently posing as family members.

The Trump administration’s controversial reliance on the active-duty military for the border mission began last fall, peaking just below 6,000 in December as Army soldiers and Marines installed barrier fencing. About half that many were extended through Sept. 30, 2019, when the new deployment will also expire.

Some 2,000 part-time National Guard troops have also been deployed to the Southwest since last spring.

The plans for additional troops were first revealed last week by The Washington Post, which reported that the troops would be granted waivers to come into contact with detained migrants — like members of the military who are already providing emergency medical care.

In the asylum memo issued Monday, Trump called for his administration to put out regulations that ensure asylum petitions before an immigration judge are resolved within 180 days, “absent exceptional circumstances.”

In addition, the president ordered federal officials to develop regulations that add a fee to asylum applications and bar immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from receiving work authorization while their applications are pending.

The memo calls for the reassignment of federal personnel to “improve the integrity” of the credible-fear interview process, the first step in certain asylum claims.

The White House also calls for regulations that would place asylum seekers who pass a credible-fear interview or demonstrate a credible fear of torture into asylum-only proceedings. Such a change would keep them from seeking other forms of relief during the process.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, praised the prospective asylum measures in a written statement.

“Our asylum system is broken and human smugglers and criminals are profiting from its weaknesses and flaws,” he said. “President Trump is doing everything within his power to address the crisis.”

Anita Kumar contributed to this report.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein formally submitted his resignation on Monday, capping a tumultuous, and unusually high-profile, two-year tenure as the Justice Department’s No. 2.

The resignation is effective May 11. Rosenstein was expected to depart the Justice Department in mid-March, shortly after the confirmation of Attorney General William Barr. But he delayed his resignation until the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, which Rosenstein oversaw for 22 months. Rosenstein assumed oversight of the investigation after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself because of the prominent role he played in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

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Rosenstein didn’t mention Mueller in his resignation letter, which was addressed to Trump. But he referenced the Justice Department’s work in combating foreign interference over the last two years, writing that “our elections are more secure, and our citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence efforts and schemes to commit fraud, steal intellectual property, and launch cyber-attacks.”

Rosenstein’s tenure was marked by broadsides against him by the president and congressional Republicans, who questioned his role in overseeing the Mueller investigation and criticized him for what they saw as stonewalling documents requests.

Just a few months ago, Trump attacked Rosenstein as “totally conflicted” and retweeted an altered image that depicted the deputy attorney general behind bars, suggesting he should be jailed for treason. He also wrote that Rosenstein appeared to be “planning a very illegal act” with the deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe, in the early days of his administration, when the pair reportedly discussed ways to remove him from office. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, went so far as to file articles of impeachment against Rosenstein last summer.

Despite the attacks, Rosenstein told Trump in his resignation letter that he was “grateful to you for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education and prosperity.”

The White House on Monday did not respond to a request for comment about the resignation.

Barr praised his deputy’s long service.

“Rod Rosenstein has served the Department of Justice with dedication and distinction for nearly thirty years as a prosecutor, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Attorney, and as Deputy Attorney General,” the attorney general said in a statement. “His devotion to the Department and its professionals is unparalleled. … Rod has been an invaluable partner to me during my return to the Department, and I have relied heavily on his leadership and judgment over the past several months.”

Rosenstein quietly defended the special counsel and pushed back on some requests from Trump’s allies in Congress for sensitive, Russia-related documents. But he also redeemed himself in the eyes of many Trump allies in recent weeks owing to his conclusion, along with Barr, that Trump did not obstruct justice over the course of the Mueller investigation.

Trump’s allies have since characterized Rosenstein as a nonpartisan professional whose input legitimized the “no obstruction” finding, while legal experts have questioned the appropriateness of Rosenstein’s weighing in given the role he played in former FBI Director James Comey’s firing, a central episode that Mueller had been scrutinizing as part of his obstruction probe.

Rosenstein has often peppered his public remarks with as many as half a dozen mentions of Trump and his agenda, making a conspicuous show of public alignment with the White House while defending the Justice Department’s autonomy in specific cases.

The deputy attorney general also isn’t bashful about sharing views that seem likely to win favor in the Oval Office, and reportedly told Trump he could “land the plane” of the Mueller investigation after news broke that he had suggested wearing a wire into the Oval Office following Comey’s firing in May 2017. While Rosenstein signaled that he was prepared to resign over the reports, he also assured the president that he would be treated fairly in the Mueller probe, according to The Washington Post.

In his resignation letter, however, Rosenstein tried to avoid politics. He emphasized the need for the Justice Department to remain nonpartisan, while taking a jab at “opinion polls” and the media.

“We enforce the law without fear or favor because credible evidence is not partisan, and truth is not determined by opinion polls,” he wrote. “We ignore fleeting distractions and focus our attention on the things that matter, because a republic that endures is not governed by the news cycle.”

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.