Trump Begs Federal Judge Not to Turn Over His Tax Returns to Congressional Investigators

By Bess Levin, Vanity Fair

06 August 21

He’s apparently very concerned about what lawmakers might find.

omething you may have picked up on over the last five years or so is that Donald Trump really, really, really doesn’t want anyone to see his tax returns. So terrified is he of anyone getting a peek at these financial documents that not only did he buck with decades of tradition by not voluntarily releasing them while running for president, he panicked and threw the full weight of his lawyers on anyone who tried to access them while he was in office, reacting to various demands and subpoenas as though someone was trying to take his child away from him (though, to be fair, it’s not clear he’d actually go to court to win custody of Don Jr. or Eric). So naturally, now that Joe Biden’s Justice Department has said the Treasury must turn over Trump’s returns to congressional investigators, he’s gone characteristically apeshit.

Per The New York Times:

Lawyers for President Donald J. Trump argued in a new court document on Wednesday that a House committee’s request to obtain six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns should be blocked, portraying the effort as politically motivated and illegitimate. In a 37-page filing, Mr. Trump’s legal team picked up arguments that the Trump-era Justice Department had put forward in a bid to stonewall the congressional request, but that the Biden-era Justice Department abandoned last week when it said the Treasury Department was legally obligated to provide the documents to lawmakers.

Mr. Trump’s legal team wrote that the requests for the former president’s tax returns “are unlawful and unenforceable because they lack a legitimate legislative purpose, exceed statutory authority, violate the First Amendment, violate due process, and/or violate the separation of powers.”

The filing argues that even though Mr. Trump is no longer the sitting president, the case must still be evaluated as if he were in office since it dates back to that period. Much of the filing reprised statements made by Democrats dating back to the 2016 campaign, when Mr. Trump broke with the norm of presidential candidates disclosing their tax returns. Democrats have repeatedly suggested that he must be hiding something politically damaging.

Claiming that Democrats are only trying to access Trump’s returns for “political gain,” the ex-president’s lawyers insist in the filing that “The requests are tailored to, and in practical operation will affect, only President Trump. The requests single out President Trump because he is a Republican and a political opponent. They were made to retaliate against President Trump because of his policy positions, his political beliefs, and his protected speech, including the positions he took during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns.” Which is basically a fancy way of screaming, “Witch hunt! Witch hunt!” over and over again, as Trump has done hundreds of millions of times, about everything from his taxes to impeachment to criminal probes, since 2016.

While the continued legal battle means Congress is unlikely to see Trump’s tax returns anytime soon, if ever, history, at the moment, is not on his side. Earlier this year, a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to obtain his tax returns, a turn of events Trump responded to by screaming at whatever poor soul had to dictate his words: “These are attacks by Democrats willing to do anything to stop the almost 75 million people (the most votes, by far, ever gotten by a sitting president) who voted for me in the election—an election which many people, and experts, feel that I won.… In the meantime, murders and violent crime are up in New York City by record numbers, and nothing is done about it. Our elected officials don’t care. All they focus on is the persecution of President Donald J. Trump.”