As Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1789: “In this world nothing can be said as certain except death and taxes.” More than 200 years later the quote should probably be changed to “nothing is certain except death and taxes and” Donald Trump go to the end of the world to prevent his taxes from seeing the light of day, presumably because they contain damning information. ”Obviously, Trump has spent his entire presidency treating his tax returns like state secrets, and more than six months after after leaving the White House, he’s still terrified that someone might get their hands on them. Unfortunately, his luck with keeping his returns under wraps has run out.
It should be noted here that there are several congressional bodies that want to get their hands on the former president’s tax records. And in all cases things are not going so well for the ex-president. One such case on Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s accountants must hand over his financial documents to the House of Representatives oversight committee for two years, which is investigating whether he and his business associates have benefited from his time at the White House. (Random 2016-2020 observers would say he undoubtedly did so.) While writing that some of the committee’s demands were too broad, the US district court judge said Amit Mehta agreed with the legislature’s claims that they needed the information to “judge whether” according to Politico [Trump] Has violated the constitutional remuneration clauses by accepting payments from state or foreign governments and … reviewing the lease the General Services Administration granted in 2013 to one of Trump’s companies to build and build the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office operate.”
During his tenure, Trump’s Washington hotel, a stone’s throw from the White House, was the place GOP lawmakers, corporate executives doing business in front of the Justice Department, foreign officials, and anyone who wanted to kiss the ring knew his Money would go away far. (“Why shouldn’t I stay in his hotel blocks away from the White House so I can say to the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come into your city and say, ‘I’m staying?’ an Asian diplomat told the Washington Post in 2016. While Trump’s attorneys will no doubt appeal Wednesday’s decision, it’s obviously a major setback. A meltdown in Trumpworld is likely also due to the fact that that, as Politico states, “the legislature would face few restrictions on the publication of the information”.
In a separate lawsuit asking whether the House Ways and Means Committee should receive the ex-president’s returns for six years – the DOJ recently said it should – Hill reports that Trump said before ” significant legal hurdles ”. Although his attorneys responded to the DOJ ruling by asking to prevent the Treasury Department from handing over the financial documents, they claimed the House of Representatives was calling for Trump to be singled out “because he is a Republican and a political opponent,” experts say the odds are not on his side.
“Not have [the Justice Department as an] Ally will make it harder for Trump, “said Jonathan David Shaub, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky and former [DOJ Office of Legal Counsel] Lawyer. Shaub added that while Trump’s lawyers attempt to undermine the committee’s reasoning for collecting tax returns, judges typically don’t question lawmakers’ intentions. “Courts have traditionally been very respectful of what the committee says,” he said. “And they accept that and then they will test whether this is a visually valid motion or not, given the jurisdiction of the committee and whatever kind of separation of powers principles that Trump’s lawyers are raising.”
Richard Pomp, a tax law professor at the University of Connecticut says it may not be successful for Trump’s legal team in attributing the committee’s request to a political attack on the former president if the House attorneys can prove they were looking for the documents pursue a legislative purpose. “That doesn’t really mean there isn’t any merit here,” said Pomp. “Just because you have a bunch of Democrats who would do nothing more than post everything that is passed to Ways and Means, it doesn’t affect the legal issue.”