US Supreme Court to rule on Trump tax returns
WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether Congress and the Manhatan district atorney can see President Donald Trump’s taxes and other financial records that the president has fought hard to keep private.
The Supreme Court will rule on two related cases to answer this, with potentially widespread political implications.
The decision by the nine justices could lit the veil on Trump’s finances ahead of the Nov.3 election.
Unlike all of his predecessors since Richard Nixon in the 1970s, New York real estate mogul Trump refused to release his tax returns, despite promising to do so during his 2016 White House campaign.
Trump made his fortune a key component of that campaign, and his lack of transparency raises questions about his true worth and possible conflicts of interest.
Congressional investigations have raised questions about whether Trump has sensitive financial exposure to Russia, and also whether he has used questionable accounting loopholes to avoid paying taxes in the 1990s and 2000s. Atorneys for Trump claim the president enjoys total immunity during his time in office, and that this is necessary so he can concentrate on his work without being “harassed” by prosecutors or lawmakers.
During the proceedings, one of the atorneys even argued that the president could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York and not be prosecuted until he let office - echoing a Trump 2016 campaign boast claiming that he would not lose any voters if he commited such a crime.
The cases could have long-term implications for the ability of lawmakers to scrutinise presidents, as well as test the claim by Trump’s atorneys that a president is immune from criminal investigation while in office.
One of the cases before the Supreme Court relates to an investigation opened by the state of New York, and poses the specific question of the president’s immunity from prosecution.
In April 2019, New York District Atorney Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, asked accounting firm Mazars - Trump’s longtime accounting firm - to provide him with eight years of the president’s financial records (2011 to 2018) in order to shed light on an alleged “hush money” payment made to porn actor and former Playboy model Stormy Daniels.
Such an unreported payment, made to obtain the silence of Daniels over an alleged affair with the billionaire Republican, would be a violation of state laws covering campaign finances.
Separately, two commitees from the House of Representatives - under Democratic control- are seeking access to an array of financial documents from the same period in injunctions sent to Mazars as well as to Deutsche Bank and Capital One bank.