Republicans expressed unease after Trump's longtime accounting firm cut its ties with the former president

• Trump's longtime accountants distanced themselves from his businesses in newly published documents.
• The news had ripples in the Republican Party, helping galvanize Trump's critics.

Some Republicans expressed unease after former President Donald Trump's accounting firm severed ties with him last week and said that 10 years of his financial statements could not be relied on.

The statement from Mazars adds to the tangle of controversies surrounding Trump's business empire as he teases a potential new campaign for the presidency in 2024.

In a letter released as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James' investigation into the Trump Organization, Mazars said the statements it helped compile on Trump's finances "should not be relied upon."

In recent days, reports have said that some Republican leaders are questioning Trump's pre-eminence in the party. The GOP figures named are all those who have been willing to criticize Trump in the past.

They are said to believe that controversy surrounding his business dealings and his fixation on bogus election-fraud claims could damage the party in the midterms.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was quietly backing candidates who would resist Trump's influence.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, a high-profile critic of the former president, told The Hill on Tuesday that the statement by Mazars was "very unusual."

"I've never seen that happen to an ongoing entity. They did also in their statement say that they didn't see anything of a substantial nature ... that suggested there had been misreporting, but it will obviously create a great deal of anxiety inside the organization and an effort to find what that problem was," he said.

Another senior Republican, who spoke to the publication on condition of anonymity, said that the investigations could "obviously" affect Trump's decision to run or his viability as a candidate.

In more outspoken style, the longtime Republican Trump critic George Conway in a CNN interview said the development was "calamitous" and "worse than being impeached twice."

The statement raises "all sorts of potential collateral issues for the Trump Organization," Conway claimed.

Trump faces a parallel criminal inquiry into allegations of tax fraud by the Manhattan district attorney, who charged the Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, with tax offenses last year.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and remains a favorite to clinch the GOP presidential nomination should he run for the presidency again in 2024.

The Trump Organization said Monday that it was "disappointed that Mazars has chosen to part ways," with it.