Report: Congress Will Soon Get Its Hands on Evidence of Trump’s Many Alleged Crimes

As Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1789, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” More than 200 years later, the quote should probably be amended to read “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and Donald Trump going to the ends of the earth to prevent his taxes from seeing the light of day, presumably because they contain damning information.” Obviously, Trump spent the entirety of his presidency treating his tax returns like they were state secrets, and more than six months after departing the White House, he’s still completely terrified for anyone to get their hands on them. Unfortunately, his luck vis-à-vis keeping his returns under lock and key has run out.

The thing to remember here is that there are multiple congressional bodies that want to get their hands on the former president’s tax records. And in all cases, things aren’t going too well for the ex-president. On Wednesday, in one such case, a federal judge ruled that Trump‘s accountants must hand over two years’ worth of his financial documents to the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating if he and his business partners profited from his time in the White House. (Casual observers of the years 2016–2020 would say he clearly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, did.) While writing that some of the committee’s requests were too broad, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta agreed with lawmakers’ claims that they needed the information to, per Politico, “assess whether [Trump] violated the Constitution’s emoluments clauses by accepting payments from state or foreign governments and…to audit the lease the General Services Administration granted to one of Trump’s businesses in 2013 to build and operate the Trump International Hotel at the Old Post Office building.”

During his time in office, Trump’s Washington hotel, located just a stone‘s throw from the White House, was the place GOP lawmakers, corporate executives with business before the Justice Department, foreign officials, and anyone looking to kiss the ring knew their money would go far. (“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’” an Asian diplomat told The Washington Post in 2016.) While Wednesday’s decision will no doubt be appealed by Trump’s lawyers, it’s obviously a major setback. Also probably causing a meltdown in Trumpworld is the fact that, as Politico notes, “Lawmakers would face few strictures on making the information public.”

In a separate court case regarding whether the House Ways and Means Committee should receive six years’ worth of the ex-president’s returns—the DOJ recently said it should—the Hill reports that Trump is facing “significant legal hurdles.” Though his lawyers responded to the DOJ ruling by asking to block the Treasury from handing over the financial documents, claiming the House requests single out Trump “because he is a Republican and a political opponent,” experts say the odds are not on his side.

“Not having [the Justice Department as an] ally is going to make it harder for Trump,” said Jonathan David Shaub, an assistant law professor at the University of Kentucky and a former [DOJ Office of Legal Counsel] attorney. Shaub added that while Trump’s lawyers are seeking to undermine the committee’s rationale for seeking the tax returns, judges typically don’t second-guess lawmakers’ intent. “Courts are traditionally very deferential to what the committee says it’s doing,” he said. “And they accept that and then they’ll test whether that’s a facially valid request or not, given the committee’s jurisdiction, and any kind of separation-of-powers principles that Trump’s attorneys raise.”

Richard Pomp, a tax law professor at the University of Connecticut, says that ascribing the committee’s request to a political attack on the former president may not prove to be successful for Trump’s legal team if the House’s lawyers can show that they have a legislative purpose in seeking the documents. “That doesn’t really mean that there’s not merit here,” Pomp said. “Just because you’ve got a bunch of Democrats that would love nothing better than to publicize everything that is turned over to Ways and Means really doesn’t affect the legal issue.”

In a letter to the Treasury sent in June, Rep. Richard Neal, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said his panel sought Trump’s tax returns to help it craft legislation “in an informed and responsible manner,” which includes but is not limited to understanding “the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces the Federal tax laws against a President.” He added: “There have been claims that the true and sole purpose of the Committee’s inquiry here is to expose former President Trump’s tax returns. These claims are wrong.”

Pomp said the case is more likely to focus on the committee’s stated goals for seeking the documents. “There are untested issues here. A judge is going to have to determine whether there’s a sufficient legislative purpose, while paying proper respect to the legislative branch of the government and their powers,” Pomp said. “I think it will be difficult on a judge to say this is outside the bounds of the law.”

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s lawyers’ attempts to block his longtime accountants from turning over his tax returns to the Manhattan district attorney’s office (which in July charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, with tax fraud—charges both parties deny). Will he go 0 for 3? We’ll find out soon enough!

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