Trump’s Strategy of Keeping His Tax Returns Secret: Running Out of Time

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Donald Trump continues to oppose lawmakers ’efforts to obtain his financial records — and use the same argument of“ presidential harassment ”to justify throwing in the House Oversight Committee. “No previous Congress has asked for this type of information, but every future Congress will do if this court upholds a subpoena,” Cameron T. Norris, an attorney for the former president, told the appellate court of DC on Monday. “There is no principled way to limit the fall of President Trump.”

That argument didn’t exactly work for him before; even though a federal judge in August placed limits on what records Chamber investigators could find, the implication that Trump was completely absent from the subpoena did not pass legal assembly. But it may be enough to help him carry out his usual legal strategy: dragging out of litigation as much as possible. “We urge this court on the strongest possible rule to rule as soon as possible,” Douglas Letter, an attorney representing the House of Representatives, told a three -judge panel on Monday.

The case has been going on since 2019, when Democrats — just before a midterm victory that gave them control of the House of Representatives — asked Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm, to return his elusive financial records. Trump has sued Mazars to block the company from releasing them and is fighting in court to prevent lawmakers from getting them. Last year, the case reached the Supreme Court, which allowed prosecutors to access Trump’s tax returns but prevented Congress from doing so so far, asking lower courts to consider whether the subpoenas are too broad and if lawmakers can get information elsewhere.

In August, federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that congressional investigators could retrieve Trump’s tax returns from his years in office and several other records from the past decade, but nothing else. Neither side particularly liked that decision: Trump, whose financial records could provide evidence of wrongdoing, wanted none of his documents to be released, and House lawmakers wanted more material than Mehta’s decision allowed. Both sides appealed, and the case went to a panel with three judges.

Those judges — Ketanji Brown Jackson, Judith W. Rogers, and Sri Srinivasan — did not seem inclined to Norris ’argument that advocating the subpoena would subject the presidents to harassment from lawmakers. But it remains to be seen whether they will accept the Letter’s counterargument — that the limitations the Supreme Court has asked lower courts to consider no longer apply to Trump because he is no longer in office. “The Constitution draws a clear line between a president and a former president,” Liham said Monday. “A former president is a man who has rejoined the great unclean.” It remains to be seen what will happen if the case goes back to the conservative Supreme Court, as it is likely to do eventually. But the biggest question hanging over the proceedings may be the timing: Trump has already achieved his one-term presidency without having to show his notes to lawmakers. With the long process of appeals and more certainty coming, he will likely be able to drag the case out even longer.

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