President Trump was never going to show his taxes.
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We knew this in 2015 when he was running for president and claimed that his taxes were being held up by an audit by the IRS. Then we learned that an audit wouldn’t stop the president from releasing his taxes. But he still wouldn’t release them. Then we learned that the president is some $400,000,000 in debt but we don’t know who he owes this money to. Since taking office the president has successfully kept his taxes secret by blocking every attempt by any official that has tried to see them.
Tuesday was no different as the president has asked the Supreme Court to block a lower court ruling that would force him to hand over years of income tax documents to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, thus making Trump the Dikembe Mutombo of blocking his taxes.
From CNBC:
Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court asking the court to issue a stay, or suspension, of a grand jury subpoena demanding those tax returns and other financial records from his accountants.
The request is pending the president’s plan to formally ask the high court hear his appeal of the lower court rulings that have allowed that subpoena.
If the Supreme Court agrees to hear his appeal, it will be the second time the court has taken the case, which is related to an ongoing criminal probe of the Trump Organization, the president’s company, by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office.
Trump’s lawyers in their filing Tuesday said “there is a reasonable probability that” the Supreme Court will take the appeal.
In the meantime, Vance has agreed to hold off on enforcing the subpoena pending the outcome of Trump’s efforts at the Supreme Court.
The high court has already rejected Trump’s argument last summer that being president protected him from having to turn over eight years of his financial records from Mazars USA accounting firm. But the Supreme Court left the door open for Trump to make new arguments against the subpoena with a federal district court in Manhattan.
A lower court judge has already ruled against the president and his lawyers, who argued that the subpoena was overreaching and issued in bad faith, CNBC reports.
A federal appeals court then upheld that ruling last month.
And if you think all of this is ridiculous, that’s because it is and that’s just the way Trump wants it. He has no intention, nor did he ever, of showing his taxes to the American people, and he’s going to continue to keep this tied up in the courts for as long as he can.
CNBC notes that Vance isn’t looking for Trump’s taxes just to pry; he’s reportedly looking to see how the president made hush-money payments to women who claimed to have had sex with him and how the Trump Organization accounted for the payments. But that isn’t all: “Prosecutors in Vance’s office also might be investigating possible tax crimes, as well as bank and insurance fraud,” court filings suggest, CNBC reports.
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