Trump has just lost another battle to try and keep this tax records away from Congress:
BLOOMBERG – President Donald Trump, under siege from House Democrats weighing impeachment, suffered a stinging blow as a federal appeals court upheld a subpoena ordering his accountants to provide Congress with his financial records.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, means Trump will lose control of his long-secret tax and other business papers at Mazars USA LLP unless the full court reconsiders the decision or the U.S. Supreme Court blocks it. In a 2-1 decision, the judges rejected arguments made by lawyers for the president that the House Oversight and Reform Committee had no legitimate legislative reason to seek the information.
”Disputes between Congress and the president are a recurring plot in our national story,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote in the majority’s 66-page opinion. “And that is precisely what the Framers intended.” He quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said that the purpose of the separation of powers was “to save the people from autocracy.”
The ruling comes just days after Mazars was ordered by a federal district court to turn over his tax filings and other financial records to New York state prosecutors, though the president won a last-minute delay pending an emergency appeal.
You can be sure that this appeals court ruling isn’t the end of the line for Trump’s taxes. As Bloomberg points out, the entire appeals court can reconsider the matter and if that doesn’t work out, the Supreme Court could step in as well.
In case you’re wondering, Tatel is a Clinton appointee. Judge Millett is an Obama appointee. And Judge Rao, who dissented, is a Trump appointee.
You can read the full decision and dissent here.