WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from Donald Trump has blocked the release of his tax returns to the House committee looking for them, the latest legal setback former president outlived the court he had helped to form.
Trump asked the High Court Oct. 31 to intervene in his long-running court battle with the House Committee on Access to his six years of tax returns. since then Trump has announced that he will run for president again in 2024, and the Republicans flipped enough seats to take over control of the House of Representatives in early January.
The court denied Trump’s request without comment, which is common on his emergency list. There were no noticeable disagreements. A spokeswoman for the former president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The fight over Trump’s taxes is years in the making: Democrats in 2019 sought copies of his declarations from the Ministry of Finance after Trump broke with tradition by refusing to release them as nominees in 2016. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against Trump in late October, declining to review August ruling by a panel of three judges who unanimously sided with the House of Representatives committee in the dispute.
The Supreme Court’s decision came after it ruled against Trump last month in another extraordinary case involving the documents captured in the summer at his Mar-a-Lago club. In that case, the former president asked the court to allow an independent arbitrator or special master to review about 100 classified documents.
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Trump’s post-presidency approval rating on the Supreme Court is not very good, even though he appointed three of the court’s current justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanagh, and Amy Connie Barrett. In January The Supreme Court refused to block the session of the Chamber Commission investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6, with the acquisition of documents from the Trump administration. In 2020, the court ruled that Trump could not keep his tax returns and financial statements away from the New York prosecutor investigating possible hush money payments during the 2016 White House campaign.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the latest case raised “important questions about the separation of powers that will affect every future president.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, who hears emergency appeals for the District of Columbia, temporarily postponed the case to give the parties opportunity to submit written arguments.
Democrats are running out of time to try to get the documents: When Republicans take control of the House early next year, they will almost certainly drop the request. Three candidates from the Republican Party for the position of chairman of the Ways and Means Committee told CNBC this month that they will not pursue the former president’s tax returns.
Neither House committee Democrats nor the Treasury Department immediately responded to a request for comment.
