President Trump really, really doesn’t want the public to see his tax returns. To keep them from view, he has endured a controversy that has now been running for three years, with all the attendant bad publicity and persistent questions, so it was obviously worth a great deal of political risk to make sure they remained secret.
Trump won’t stop fighting any release, but Democrats in Congress are getting ready to make their demand:
Congressional Democrats are likely to request 10 years of President Trump’s tax returns in coming weeks, tailoring their inquiry in a way they hope will survive a court battle, according to lawmakers and others involved in the discussions.The exact parameters of the request are still in flux, including whether to seek tax returns related to Trump’s many business enterprises in addition to his personal returns.But Democrats led by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), along with congressional lawyers, are in the advanced stages of preparing the request. They’re relying on a 1924 law that gives chairmen of House and Senate tax-writing committees broad powers to demand the tax returns of White House officials.
Everything we have learned suggests that it is absolutely necessary to examine the Trump Organization’s returns as well, since Trump refused to divest himself of his assets as other presidents had done and, even as we speak, it serves as a conduit for all kinds of interested parties — both foreign and domestic — to put money in the president’s pocket.
When the Ways and Means Committee requests the returns, Trump apparently intends to order the treasury secretary to order the Internal Revenue Service to refuse to comply with the request, which will then set off a legal battle that will inevitably end up before the Supreme Court. If any kind of rational conception of law were to carry the day, Trump would lose by a 9-to-0 vote. The law in question is unambiguous: Congress can request any person’s tax returns. They have a compelling interest in doing so: to police corruption in the Oval Office. It’s not even a close call.
But there are five conservative justices on the court who have, in the past, shown themselves to be receptive to arguments based on the legal doctrine of “If the president is a Republican he gets to do what he wants.” So there’s no telling how the case will turn out.
Before that final decision is rendered, the president’s defenders will be called upon to argue passionately that the United States should, like Indy and Marion at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” shut tight its eyes and refuse to gaze upon the returns. So let’s run down some of the arguments they’re likely to make:
Democrats are just hoping to find something incriminating! Indeed, they are. Just as the cops are hoping to find something incriminating when they search a suspect’s house. But if the search is legitimate and is carried out professionally, that’s perfectly fine. And if nothing incriminating is found, won’t Trump be vindicated?
He won the 2016 election, which means nobody cares! Actually, lots of people care. The latest Quinnipiac poll finds that 64 percent of Americans say he should release the returns.
If they can get his tax returns, they can get anybody’s! Like whose? If Congress has a legitimate reason to get anyone’s returns, it can. It’s not requesting them just because they’re curious, and next it will be asking for Katy Perry’s. Trump’s returns are relevant to multiple congressional investigations that either have already begun or will soon begin.
Trump has a right to privacy! Not really. We ask presidents to give up their privacy in all kinds of ways — including by filing financial disclosures — because the stakes for the country are extremely high. But Trump’s finances are so complex, and the consequences of corruption in his position so profound, that only his tax returns can give us something like a full picture of whether he has conflicts of interest.
You can’t release returns while you’re under audit! This is what Trump has argued since the 2016 campaign, and it’s just bogus. He is free to release them. And, after all, the IRS knows what’s in them since it’s the IRS. And the IRS audits the returns of every president and vice president every year they’re in office, which never stopped previous presidents from releasing them.
There is one thing Trump can be thankful for: If we’re only able to see the last 10 years of his returns, we won’t be able to learn more about the massive tax fraud that he and his family engaged in during the 1990s, a story the New York Times broke last October after obtaining Fred Trump’s business records. Those records showed that Fred Trump and his children, including Donald, defrauded the Treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars with a stunning variety of tax-evasion schemes; the statute of limitations has run out, so fortunately for him there’s no possibility of prosecution, at least on that score.
But let’s be honest: If Trump’s tax returns would reveal nothing more than that he’s a shrewd businessman who has amassed great wealth and gives generously to charity, he would have mailed a copy of those returns to every household in the United States. It’s precisely because they could provide evidence of wrongdoing, conflicts of interest and perhaps even lawbreaking that he is so determined to keep them secret. His defenders in the administration, in Congress, and in the conservative media understand that perfectly well.
Which is why they’re going to squeal like pigs that it is a terrible thing to let the public see what’s in the Trump’s returns. That is, until we actually see what’s inside and they can no longer justify having thought that we shouldn’t be able to know where the president gets his money and what he does with it.
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