Lawyers for former President Donald Trump argued in a new court document on Wednesday that a House committee’s request to obtain six years of Trump’s tax returns should be blocked, portraying the effort as politically motivated and illegitimate.
In a 37-page filing, Trump’s legal team picked up arguments that the Trump-era Justice Department had put forward in a bid to stonewall the congressional request, but that the Biden-era Justice Department abandoned last week when it said the Treasury Department was legally obligated to provide the documents to lawmakers.
Trump’s legal team wrote that the requests for the former president’s tax returns “are unlawful and unenforceable because they lack a legitimate legislative purpose, exceed statutory authority, violate the First Amendment, violate due process, and/or violate the separation of powers.”
The lawsuit, which dates back to the period when Trump was still president, is formally a case between the House Ways and Means Committee and the Treasury Department. But with the executive branch now having dropped its resistance to complying with the request, the Trump legal team, as interveners, is asking for an injunction blocking that step.
The filing argues that even though Trump is no longer the sitting president, the case must still be evaluated as if he were in office because it dates back to that period. Much of the filing reprised statements made by Democrats dating back to the 2016 campaign, when Trump broke with the norm of presidential candidates disclosing their tax returns. Democrats have repeatedly suggested that he must be hiding something politically damaging.
During the Trump administration, the Justice Department cited such statements to make the argument that the stated purpose for the request by the committee — that Congress was weighing legislative reforms regarding presidential tax return disclosure — was a pretext for what was in fact an illegitimate purpose.
Last week, however, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said the executive branch must accept the committee’s stated purpose for why it is seeking the returns, and that the law permits it to obtain them.
The continued legal fight means that Congress will not receive Trump’s tax returns any time soon; the committee or Trump’s legal team can appeal any adverse rulings up to the Supreme Court. Even if Congress does eventually obtain them, that would not mean they would become public immediately or at all.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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