Tag: Trump taxes

House to quickly revive legal effort to get Trump’s financial records

The House’s top lawyer urged the Supreme Court to take its final formal steps on the matter so lawmakers can reignite the issue in the lower courts.

The House is planning to quickly revisit its effort to obtain President Donald Trump’s personal financial records, urging the Supreme Court on Monday night to take its final formal steps on the matter so lawmakers can reignite the issue in the lower courts.

In a filing late Monday, the House’s top lawyer, Douglas Letter, urged the justices to immediately effectuate their July 9 ruling on the House’s subpoena for Trump’s records. Once the ruling is in force, the House can return to the U.S. District Court judge who initially heard the case and ask for renewed consideration.

“The Committees’ investigations are ongoing, remain urgent, and have been impeded by the lack of finality in these litigations, which were initiated in April 2019,” Letter and other House attorneys wrote. Continue reading.

Giuliani contradicts Trump’s excuse for hiding his taxes

AlterNet logoFormer Lifelock spokesperson Rudy Giuliani tells Salon that the audits of President Trump’s tax returns have been “completed and accepted,” except for “possibly not most recent.”

Giuliani was confirming claims he made Sunday morning to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. This new story, however, seems to undermine the president’s excuse that he can’t release his returns because they are under audit, a line he has been repeating since the 2016 campaign.

Last Thursday, following the Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling that the Manhattan district attorney can subpoena the president’s tax returns, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeated the excuse to reporters, saying, “The media’s been asking this question for four years, and for four years, the president has said the same thing, his taxes are under audit, and when they’re no longer under audit, he will release them.” Continue reading.

Trump’s new excuse on not releasing his taxes is ‘completely meaningless’ and may not even be in English: CNN’s Toobin

AlterNet logoCNN’s Jeffrey Toobin on Friday found himself flabbergasted by President Donald Trump’s new excuse for not releasing his tax returns, and he questioned whether the president was even speaking English when he made it.

During a CNN panel discussion, Toobin was shown a clip of Trump talking about releasing his tax returns during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“I’m under tax audit, I have been for a long period of time,” the president told Hannity. “Once I ran for politics that deal was like we didn’t make it. So I’m under a continuing audit, and anyone that did that or showed that before you have it finalized, but they treat, they treat me horribly, the IRS. It is a disgrace what has happened. We had a deal done, I guess it was signed even. Once I ran or once I won, somewhere back a long time ago everything was like let’s start all over again.” Continue reading.

Trump gets no special protections because he’s president and must release financial records, Supreme Court rules

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump has no immunity, by virtue of being president, from a state grand jury subpoena for his business and tax recordsin a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney.

“[N]o citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion.

The court rejected the president’s claims that permitting subpoenas from state prosecutors would open the floodgates to prosecutors nationwide, distracting him from his presidential duties. It reiterated what the court had said in a previous case in which President Bill Clinton had tried to avoid giving a deposition, Clinton v. Jones: The Constitution does not require protecting the president from state grand jury subpoenas. Continue reading.

Rulings let Trump keep his taxes under wraps for now, but his angry reaction underscores a political risk

Washington Post logoPresident Trump reacted angrily to a pair of Supreme Court rulings about his financial records Thursday, taking to Twitter to call them “not fair to this Presidency or Administration!” and describing himself as the victim of a “political prosecution.”

Hours later, the White House released a statement saying Trump was “gratified” by one of the decisions and had been “protected” in the other.

The disjointed responses underscore what in some ways represented a split decision for the president, marked by political and legal ramifications that hold both risks and advantages ahead of the November election. Continue reading.

Supreme Court blocks House Democrats from access to Trump’s financial records for now

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court temporarily blocked congressional investigators Thursday from gaining access to President Donald Trump’s personal financial records.

The 7-2 decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Trump’s two nominees, Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. It sends the separation of powers dispute back to lower courts for further determination.

“Courts must perform a careful analysis that takes adequate account of the separation of powers principles at stake, including both the significant legislative interests of Congress and the ‘unique position’ of the president,” Roberts wrote. Continue reading.

Trump’s Supreme Court tax case in context

Roll Call asked a legal scholar how the case compares to others involving the limits of presidential power cases

The Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision regarding release of President Donald Trump’s tax returns as soon as early next week.

In May, Trump’s lawyers presented several arguments urging the court to shield his returns.

The legal team argued Congress must set a higher bar to issue a subpoena to a president, and that a president is immune from all investigations, both federal and state, while in office. Continue reading.

Revealed: The Family Member Who Turned on Trump

The president’s niece Mary Trump is set to publish a tell-all this summer—and to reveal that she was a primary source for The New York Times’ investigation into Trump’s taxes.

Donald Trump’s niece, his deceased brother’s daughter, is set to publish a tell-all book this summer that will detail “harrowing and salacious” stories about the president, according to people with knowledge of the project.

Mary Trump, 55, the daughter of Fred Trump Jr. and eldest grandchild of Fred Trump Sr., is scheduled to release Too Much And Never Enough on July 28, Simon & Schuster confirmed Monday, just weeks before the Republican National Convention.

One of the most explosive revelations Mary will detail in the book, according to people familiar with the matter, is how she played a critical role helping The New York Times print startling revelations about Trump’s taxes, including how he was involved in “fraudulent” tax schemes and had received more than $400 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire. Continue reading.

IG finds Treasury handled House request for Trump tax returns properly

The Hill logoThe Treasury Department’s inspector general office found that the department “properly” processed House Democrats’ request for President Trump‘s tax returns when it refused to turn over the documents to the Ways and Means Committee.

In a memo, the IG also said it found Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s supervision of the process to be consistent with its rules.

The memo said it found Treasury’s receipt, processing and responses to the request and subpoenas from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) “to be consistent with Treasury’s general process for handling Congressional correspondence.” Continue reading.

House Dems ask federal judge to proceed with Trump tax returns lawsuit — based on arguments made by president’s impeachment legal team

AlterNet logoDemocrats have been seeking President Donald Trump’s tax returns at both the federal and state levels; one of the federal efforts has been a lawsuit by the House Ways and Means Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts. And on February 15, House Democrats asked U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden to lift a stay on that lawsuit — using, reporter Jerry Lambe notes in Law & Crime, “arguments put forth by Trump’s impeachment legal team.”

House Democrats made their argument to McFadden, a Trump appointee, in an 11-page motion. And House General Counsel Douglas Letter, according to Lambe, specifically used “statements made by the president’s impeachment attorneys, Jay Sekulow and Alan Dershowitz.”

“Defendants appear to be arguing that what President Trump’s impeachment counsel meant to say was that, before impeaching the president, the House was required to file futile subpoena enforcement suits so that DOJ could then successfully obtain dismissal on justiciability grounds, without any ruling on the merits,” Douglas asserted in the motion. “The court should not assume that the president’s accomplished lawyers meant to advance such a cynical argument — that congressional committees are constitutionally obliged to waste their own time and resources, and those of the judiciary, on futile gestures.” Continue reading.