Washington, D.C. After a three-year legal battle, the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for the impending delivery of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee on Tuesday.
The court denied Trump’s request for an order that would have barred the Treasury Department from providing the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee with six years’ worth of tax returns for Trump and several of his businesses. There were no notable dissents in the decision.
Trump was the only modern president to refuse to make his tax returns public throughout his successful 2016 campaign or four years in office, claiming that the IRS was conducting an ongoing audit. Trump declared he would run for office once more in 2024 last week.
The former president suffered his third Supreme Court defeat this year and his second in as many months. The legal dispute concerning the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida resort, which produced classified information, was not taken up by the court in October.
In January, the court declined to block the National Archives from providing records to the House committee looking into the Capitol uprising on January 6. The lone vote in Trump’s favor came from Justice Clarence Thomas.
During Trump’s administration, the Treasury Department refused to turn over the documents in the controversy over his tax returns. However, the Biden administration said that it is obvious from the federal law that the committee has the authority to review the tax returns of any taxpayer, including the president.
Trump’s arguments that the committee was overstepping its bounds and wanted the records so they could be made public were rejected by lower courts, which ruled that the committee had broad jurisdiction to collect tax returns.
On November 1, Chief Justice John Roberts placed a temporary freeze to give the court time to consider the legal arguments made by Trump’s attorneys and the administration’s and the House of Representatives rebuttals.
A little more than three weeks later, the court quietly lifted Roberts’ injunction.
Until the new Congress convenes in January, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., will serve as the committee’s chairman. He stated that his committee “will conduct the oversight we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately answer an inquiry for comment.
The House argued that if the IRS couldn’t provide the tax returns, there would be “little or no time” for lawmakers to finish their work during the current Congress, which is rapidly concluding.
With Republicans prepared to take over the House in January, Trump could have put the committee out of business if he had convinced the nation’s highest court to get involved. They probably would have dropped the documents request if the matter hadn’t been settled by then.
The House Ways and Means subcommittee first requested Trump’s tax returns in 2019 as part of an inquiry into the Internal Revenue Service’s audit program and the former president’s compliance with tax law. According to federal law, the Internal Revenue Service “must furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a select group of senior politicians.
Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department defended Steven Mnuchin’s choice to withhold the tax returns from Congress. Mnuchin said he could refuse to release the records because he believed Democrats were looking for them for partisan purposes. A court case followed.
The committee reissued its request for Trump’s tax returns and additional material from 2015 to 2020 when President Joe Biden assumed office. According to the White House, the Treasury Department was forced to comply because the request was legitimate. Then, in court, Trump attempted to block the transfer.
Trump’s personal and business tax returns were obtained by the then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. as part of a criminal investigation. The Supreme Court also rejected Trump’s claim that he had broad immunity as president in that case.
