SCOTUS

Just How Screwed Is Trump After SCOTUS’s Tax Returns Ruling?

The president ranted that he’s a victim of “political prosecution.” But it may still be a while before anyone sees his financial records.
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Donald Trump attends a White House meeting July 7.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Beginning with his 2016 campaign for president, Donald Trump has desperately fought to keep his financial records private. It still might be a while before American voters get a look at the president’s financial dealings, but a major Supreme Court ruling on Thursday brought that reality one step closer.

The Supreme Court considered two cases related to Trump’s tax returns and financial records. The first, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, sought almost a decade of Trump’s business and personal tax records as part of his probe into hush money paid to the adult actress Stormy Daniels, who says she had an affair with Trump years ago. The second was related to a similar inquiry, as well as one into Trump’s tax practices, being conducted by House committees. Justices sent the latter back to the lower courts, ruling that they “did not take adequate account of the significant separation of powers concerns” raised by the case. But, in a stunning 7-2 decision in the Vance case, the nation’s high court concluded that presidents are not “immune” from grand jury requests, preventing Trump from blocking banks and accountants from releasing his records to investigators.

“Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, joined by both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. “We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need.”

Trump broke with precedent in 2016 when he refused to release his tax returns, claiming that an ongoing audit was preventing him from doing so. “As soon as the audit’s finished,” he said at the time, “it will be released.” After taking office, he and his administration made clear that he had no intention of following through. “He’s not going to release his tax returns,” Kellyanne Conway said in January 2017. “We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care.” People did care, though—particularly after it was revealed his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to a number of crimes, including campaign finance violations he says he committed at the president’s direction. Subsequent reporting by the New York Times on the Trump family’s apparently fraudulent tax schemes, as well as tax information that undercut the image he’s constructed of himself as a self-made businessman, drew further interest from investigators.

The rulings Thursday might not mean the public gets to see those tax returns any time soon. Vance may still be in for a fight, as Trump’s lawyers might have an opportunity to quibble with the specifics of the subpoena. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow vowed on Thursday to take the cases against both New York and Congressional investigators back to the lower courts, which could delay the documents’ release until after the election. But Trump clearly didn’t share in his lawyer’s optimism, spiraling into a rage and tweeting that he was the victim of “political prosecution.”

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“Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!” he wrote in a barrage of hysterical tweets recycling several of his conspiracies about Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and supposed criminal activity by Barack Obama’s administration.

Precisely what comes next remains to be seen. The Supreme Court’s decision in the case of three Congressional committees will certainly mean the already-protracted battle for Trump’s records will be further drawn out. But while the court ruled that “the House’s approach fails to take adequate account of the significant separation of powers issues raised by congressional subpoenas for the President’s information,” it affirmed that “inquiries might involve the President in appropriate cases,” despite what Trump’s legal team contended. “We will continue to press our case in the lower courts,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Thursday.

The decision in Vance’s case is a bit more straightforward; in maintaining that the chief executive is “neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need,” Trump can’t categorically block the grand jury. For a president who seems to have a great deal to hide, the ruling could present a major threat. “This is a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one—not even a president—is above the law,” Vance said in a statement after the decision. “Our investigation, which was delayed for almost a year by this lawsuit, will resume, guided as always by the grand jury’s solemn obligation to follow the law and the facts, wherever they may lead.”

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