Two months before the 2016 elections, Paul Walman wrote at The Week, “Trump will not be releasing his returns to the public. And not only that, I’m pretty sure he won’t release them even if he becomes president of the United States…”
Walman may have been right on both counts. For sure, Trump stubbornly refused to release his tax returns while running for president and now that he is president, he is using every trick in the book to continue to hide his returns.
Trump has consistently claimed that he cannot release his returns because he’s being audited by the IRS. Whether he has been audited for four or more years is unknown. But even if he has, the IRS has stated that Trump is free to release his returns if he wants to.
Considering that Trump has made more than 18,000 false or misleading claims, what’s one more whopper. Americans should be forgiven if they don’t believe him that he is being perpetually audited.
In a piece on today’s Supreme Court hearing of Trump’s lawsuit to keep Congress and others from seeing those returns and other financial records, the Washington Post in fact calls Trump’s promise that he’d release his tax returns as soon as the IRS finished auditing, “an obvious lie” and characterizes Trump’s lawyers arguments to the Supreme Court as “appalling.”
The Post:
It is almost impossible to overstate how appalling the arguments by Trump’s lawyers have been. They have claimed kingly powers for the president — that while he is in office he can’t be prosecuted or even investigated. That, they say, applies to both Congress and prosecutors.
And,”…what the arguments did reveal is the almost limitless scope of immunity he seeks. Trump believes he should be excused not just from congressional oversight, not just from criminal investigation, not just from questioning by the press, but even from politics itself”
On politics, “of course, Congress always has political motives,” the Post admits, but adds:
Democrats have political motives in seeking his tax returns just like Republicans had political motives in mounting eight separate investigations of Benghazi. Politics infuses everything. Sometimes it’s more important and sometimes less, but it’s always present. The idea that a political motive invalidates Congress’s right to issue subpoenas is positively bonkers.
How will it all end? Of course, no one knows, but the Post contemplates: “…at this point it’s far from certain we’ll ever see those returns. Trump is counting on five conservative justices to give him the immunity he believes he deserves, and they might do so. But there’s one thing Trump can’t claim immunity from: the voters.”
Americans, including many Republicans, certainly hope so.
Read more here.
