The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to be turned over to Congress after a three-year legal battle.
The court rejected that of Mr Trump urgent request for an order that would have prevented the Treasury Department from providing six years of tax returns for him and some of his businesses to the House Ways and Means Committee.
Mr. Trump was the first president in four decades not to release his tax returns.
The Democratic-controlled committee first requested Mr Trump’s 2019 tax returns as part of an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s audit program and the government’s compliance with tax laws. ‘former president.
The Treasury Department had refused to provide the records during Mr. Trump’s presidency, but President Joe Biden’s administration said federal law was clear that the committee had the right to review any taxpayer’s return, including including that of the president.
Lower courts have accepted and rejected Mr. Trump’s claims that he was overstepping and that the committee only wanted the documents made public.
Chief Justice John Roberts imposed a temporary freeze on Nov. 1 to allow the court to rule on legal issues raised by Mr. Trump’s lawyer and counterarguments from the administration and the House of Representatives.
But just over three weeks later, judges rejected Mr Trump’s emergency request, with no judge publicly dissenting.
If Mr. Trump had persuaded the Supreme Court to intervene, he might have run out of time on the committee until Republicans took control of the House in January, when they almost certainly would have dropped the request for relief. registration if it had not been resolved by then.
Third loss this year
This is the third time Mr. Trump has lost in the Supreme Court this year.
In October, he refused to intervene in the legal battle surrounding the FBI’s search of his Florida estate, where classified documents were discovered. In January, he refused to block the National Archives from turning over documents to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol.
Last week, Mr. Trump officially launched a third bid for the US presidencysaying, “America’s comeback begins now.”
Making the announcement from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he said ‘everyone is fine’ after his four years in office, ‘the world is at peace’ and he is ‘keeping his promises’ .
“Two years ago we were a great nation. And soon we will be a great nation again,” added the former US president.