Court to test Trump

Supreme justices to focus on taxes and presidential immunity

CAN Donald Trump refuse to turn over his tax returns and financial records to Congress and New York prosecutors?

The Supreme Court takes up this politically charged question tomorrow, and it may use the occasion to better define the limits of presidential immunity.

The high court’s nine justices, confined at home by the novel coronavirus pandemic, will question lawyers for both sides by telephone in a session to be broadcast live.

The hearing, initially set for late March, is being held now to allow time for the justices to render a decision before the presidential election in November, as Mr Trump seeks a second term.

The former real estate magnate, who used his fortune as an argument in his 2016 election campaign, is the first president since Richard Nixon in the 1970s to refuse to release his tax returns – prompting speculation about his true worth and his possible financial entanglements.

“There is clearly something in these documents that the President does not want us to see,” Steven Mazie, an author and educator, said.

Since retaking control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections in 2018, the Democratic opposition has been eager to find out what that “something” might be.

Several congressional committees have issued subpoenas to Mr Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars, as well as to Deutsche Bank and Capital One bank, demanding Mr Trump’s financial records for the 2011-2018 period.

“Unleashing each and every House committee to torment the president with legislative subpoena(s) … is a recipe for constitutional crisis,” the president’s lawyers said in a brief to the court.

Yet such requests are nothing new, House lawyers responded, citing examples involving presidents Richard Nixon, a Republican, and Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.