Donald Trump’s tax returns: Former president asks Supreme Court to block House committee’s access to tax returns

Washington – Former President Donald Trump is fighting to protect his few years personal tax returns from House Democrats to the Supreme Court, filing an emergency request on Monday with the High Court in an attempt to stop the pending disclosure.

“This case raises important questions about the separation of powers that will affect every future president,” Trump’s legal team wrote. “The Committee’s purpose in requesting President Trump’s tax returns has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS, but everything to do with releasing the President’s tax information to the public.”

Last week, a full federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., denied the former president’s request to review a three-judge appeals panel’s decision against him.

The D.C. Court of Appeals has ruled — apparently with no dissenting votes — that Trump v. House Committee should not be reheard in the bank and that the decision to allow disclosure of his tax returns to the committee should not be delayed pending further litigation.

Earlier this year, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals decided unanimously The committee was authorized to obtain several years of Trump’s tax returns, rejecting claims by the former president that the committee’s numerous requests for the reports were unconstitutional and served no valid legislative purpose.

“While it is possible that Congress will try to threaten a sitting president with an invasive request after leaving office, every president enters office knowing that after leaving office he will be subject to the same laws as all other citizens,” the justices wrote in August. , “This is a feature of our democratic republic, not a god.”

In his filing with the Supreme Court on Monday, Trump argued that the issues at hand are still unresolved and require a High Court hearing. “No Congress has ever used its legislative authority to require the president to produce a tax return,” his lawyers wrote. — Left unchecked, the D.C. decision will have far-reaching consequences. It would set an important (but incorrect) precedent for the policy industries moving forward, binding on a circuit in which most conflicts over congressional requests for information must be litigated.”

The litigation began after committee chairman Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, demanded that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) turn over five years of Trump’s tax returns in 2019. The Treasury Department, which was under Trump’s control at the time, refused to comply with the request, despite a process by which Congress can request certain individuals’ tax records from the IRS.

A lawsuit filed by Neal and the Ways and Means Committee followed, along with the transition of presidential power and the re-request for tax records in 2021.

Last year, a federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against the committee, the first in a series of legal losses for the former president as he fought to hide his tax records from Congress.

“A long line of cases before the Supreme Court demands great deference to the reasonable requests of Congress,” Trump appointee Trevor McFadden wrote in 2021. “Even the special concern shown by former presidents does not change the result. Therefore, the court will reject this decision. right.”

Trump asked a court on Monday to halt the release of his financial reports from the IRS to the committee pending further legal review.

The legal battle with the Ways and Means Committee is not the former president’s first attempt to shield his financial records from congressional scrutiny. In 2019, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Trump’s then-accounting firm Mazars for several years of financial records. A protracted legal battle cameculminating in a settlement reached between Trump and the Committee earlier this year. According to the Mazars, the documents began to be submitted in September The New York Times.

Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.