The Wall Street Journal reports Supreme Court Suspends House Subpoena Seeking Trump’s Financial Information.
The Supreme Court granted President Trump’s emergency request to suspend enforcement of a congressional subpoena seeking his financial records from his accounting firm, a move that could keep the documents from House Democrats for months—if they see them at all.
But in tandem with blocking the subpoena for now, the court signaled Mr. Trump would have to move quickly with his appeal, ensuring the president can’t delay proceedings through the 2020 election.
One of Two Things
- At least five justices found that the appeal had a likelihood of success on the merits and the appellant would experience irreparable harm if the state was not granted. Those five justices, and possibly more, may be favorably disposed to reversing the lower court decision.
- It might just mean that five members of the court Wanted to have sufficient time to carefully consider this, which they think is an important issue.
Nothing Decided Yet
All we can say at this point is that nothing is decided. But this was a at least a temporary victory for Trump. The court could have left the lower court ruling stand.
Heart of the Legal Battle
A Yale University blog on Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice asks Can Congress Get President Trump’s Tax Returns?
The article was written in 2017 so the second paragraph excerpted below is completely inaccurate, but the rest discusses the legal merits in general.
The statutory authority for any congressional requests would probably come from Sections 6103(f)(1) & (2) of the tax code. Under (f)(1), some committees of Congress can request disclosure of Trump’s returns and can examine those returns privately. Under (f)(2), a non-partisan career official, the Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), may also request and privately examine those returns.
As a political matter, these proposals are a long shot, whatever their independent merits. Republicans control congressional committees and probably won’t request President Trump’s tax returns or publicly disclose them. And though the JCT Chief of Staff is nonpartisan and can request Trump’s tax returns, he cannot independently disclose those returns. Only the full JCT, controlled by Republicans, can do so.
Even if a congressional committee requests President Trump’s tax returns from the IRS, President Trump may have a constitutional defense to disclosure. That is, although Section 6103(f) is phrased in absolute terms — it allows tax committees and the JCT Chief of Staff to obtain tax return information, without qualification — any congressional action, including requests for information, must come within the scope of legislative powers granted by Article I of the Constitution. And a request for President Trump’s tax returns, if made for purely political purposes, may exceed legislative powers. (Update: For my full length law review article on the subject, see here: The President’s Tax Returns).
As the Supreme Court explained in Watkins v. United States, “there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure.” Rather, if Congress wants to collect information from the executive branch or other outsiders, it must do so in connection with its legislative power. That is, a Congressional attempt to investigate an official or request information from him is valid only to the extent it serves proper legislative purposes. Congress cannot simply engage in “a fruitless investigation into the personal affairs of individuals.” Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168, 195 (1880). Thus, for example, it seems unlikely that Congress could properly request the tax returns of all civil rights leaders solely for the purpose of harassing them, even if there were potential non-discriminatory reasons for making those requests.
However, as President Trump has himself found out through litigation involving his immigration order, public comments can sometimes backfire. The many intemperate public comments that Democratic legislators have made about Trump’s tax returns could taint any request they make for them. That is, if the power balance shifts in Congress and a Democrat-controlled tax committee requests the President’s tax returns, President Trump may be able to properly disregard that request, if he correctly believes that the request is supported only by personal animus and not a proper “legislative purpose.” See Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 200 (1957).
The Issues
There is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure. Thus, if Trump can persuade the court this is a political witch hunt, the Supreme Court will toss the lawsuit on those grounds.
The court might decide in favor of Trump anyway, for other reasons.
On the other hand, there is an ongoing impeachment investigation in which Trump’s finance could apply. But then again, the request for his returns pre-dates the impeachment investigation.
Finally, did Trump again manage to say something in public comments that could backfire? That is always a possibility.
In conclusion, there are a huge number of reasons the Supreme Court might have wanted to hear the case, not just rubber stamp a victory from Trump.
But, the fact the Supreme Court will the case at all is a good thing for Trump and a bad thing for the Democrats, at least compared to the alternative.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Is the IRS not capable of determining if he has broken any tax laws? Why can’t political hacks let the IRS do it’s job?
Simple answer: Trump was elected without releasing his tax returns. The majority of voters in enough states apparently didn’t care. Leading up to the next election, he will probably again “promise” to release them if he exhausts all appeals to the courts. Of course, he still has the “under IRS audit” excuse available.
Nobody’s damn business
It may show that he’s not nearly as rich as he brags about. Or that he pays very little in taxes. Or that his major source of income is not in running businesses, but in licensing his name. Just speculating here.
Political theater— red meat morsels for the respective base’s. The Dems have lost the occasional vote from this independent. Now it’s the repubicrats to lose my occasional vote for them.
For somebody with nothing to hide, he’s trying really hard to hide it.
He is the largest individual tax filer in the US because of his way of incorporated each project separately. There is a photo of him somewhere with a stack of a single year’s returns which is a few stacks each several feet high.
The US tax code is an arcane maze with no end of elements which, if published out of context, could be made to look terrible, and or picked apart by ‘independent tax experts’ ad infinitum. As Trump has said many times, his audited financial statement says much more – and far more intelligibly – than tax returns, all of which have been audited every year for years.
So I don’t think others should have access to that stuff in a political process to show that he highballs valuations in one situation and lowballs them in another, especially when such things are routinely done all the time. The financials should be enough.
The political process in the US is entirely disgusting at this point, in any case. I very much doubt it is restorable but the irony is that those working so hard to bring Trump down are the ones doing far more damage than he is – if he actually is at all. At the time, people felt JFK was way over the line in terms of ‘tone’ and behavior, but his assassination marked the beginning of the US’s overt transitioning from a Great Power with Promise to a Great Power with Menace, moreover in overall cultural decline.
I don’t believe there is any way Trump (and whichever Team or Bloc is behind him) can turn back the clock to seriously reduce the Administrative State, dismantle the credit cartels (Fed) and the Intelligence Community Military Industrial Complex, let alone untangle the latter from the Media and Congress and the Corporate Matrix. The only hope I get from him is that seemingly – unless it’s all kabuki which is quite possible in today’s Reality TV Perpetual PsyOp Republic – all those forces are trying to push him out, so maybe, just maybe, he really is fighting a just fight, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll pull off a miracle and, by exposing many of the machinations in play now for decades, he will do far more good for the Republic than any President in a very long time.
But am not holding breath…
The issue is if our leaders are corruptable via their personal businesses, then it is an issue for all levels of government. If there is some landmark ruling that Trump must release his tax returns based being a public servant, then look for him to retaliate by asking every congressional member and senator and presidential candidate to release their returns. Trump is going to do what Trump does best – drag others down into the dirt and fight.
In a matter of speaking from the court case perspective. You never see any court cases against representatives tax returns. There is the business swamp and the government swamp. The swamps are interwoven in Washington. That is what has created this corporate fascist nation-state known as the United States.
Its obvious the elite Democratic swamp dwellers are merely spending our tax money exploring any avenue to over through a President that is not part of the swamp. At least Trump has exposed the corruption in DC and the media. Ex: Biden kickback of foreign aid to son Hunter
I wouldn’t call this round 1, he has lost every single lower court ruling. He’s looking for a knock out punch in the last round of the fight.
the sore losing Democrats bunch has been shooting itself in the foot big time, that much is obvious….
I always wondered why he is refusing to release his returns. He offers no reasonable explanation.
I could care less about his returns it just seems out of normal protocol.
Again, he is the largest individual filer in the country and submits thousands of pages each year. These things can all be distorted ad infinitum in the media and no way to defend against no end of slanted, distorted interpretations of figures presented in tax forms which are extremely arcane. Furthermore, as something voluntarily submitted by a citizen to the State, they should not be ‘required reading’ by anyone except that individual and the tax men authorized to process it. Citizens are not chattel.
There is no legal requirement for candidates to release them.
If there was something truly dishonest in Trump’s tax returns, we would have heard about it long before now. That’s the way the deep state works.
California lost its bid to keep Trump off the primary ballot.