The Supreme Court on Tuesday (local time) cleared the way for the imminent handover of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee after a three-year legal fight. The court’s move is a major loss for Trump, who has sought to shield the release of his tax returns for years and is currently under multiple investigations, reported CNN. Trump’s legal team has continuously sought to keep his returns secret and turned to the Supreme Court—composed of three of his nominees—after he lost at the lower court level.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who supervises the lower court that issued the order in the Trump case, had placed a temporary hold on the subpoena in November presumably to give the justices more time to consider the issue. The court, without comment, rejected Trump’s plea for an order that would have prevented the Treasury Department from giving six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his businesses to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, first sought the tax returns from the IRS in 2019, and the agency, under the Trump administration, initially resisted turning them over. The case moved slowly until 2021, when, under the Biden administration, the Justice Department changed its legal posture and concluded the IRS was obligated to comply with the committee’s request.
A Trump-appointed judge ruled in the House’s favour late last year and the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reverse that ruling, most recently with the full appeals court declining to take up the case.
The court held that the request for the documents served a legitimate legislative purpose to look at tax laws as they apply to a sitting president and rejected Trump’s argument that the stated purpose was a mere pretext to hide a political calculation,.
“We knew the strength of our case, we stayed the course, followed the advice of counsel, and finally, our case has been affirmed by the highest court in the land,” Neal said.
