Former president Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and prevent members of Congress from obtaining his past tax returns in an appeal filed Monday. Should the court decline, the records are set to be turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday.
“The Committee has no pressing need for Applicants’ information so it can study generic legislation about funding and regulating future IRS audits of future Presidents,” his attorney Cameron Norris wrote, saying the release of records would cause Trump “irreparable harm.”
Last week, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
declined to review earlier rulings finding that lawmakers are
entitled to the documents. The court also said it would not put the release of the papers on hold while Trump continues a legal fight that began in 2019. But the Supreme Court could issue an emergency order keeping the records from being released this week.
Lawmakers said they needed Trump’s tax returns from his time in office to help evaluate the effectiveness of annual presidential audits. Trump argued that their aims were actually to embarrass him politically, but federal judges have
consistently ruled that the lawmakers established the “valid legislative purpose” required for disclosure.
This is not the only case in which Trump is seeking to shield his financial information. The Supreme Court last year
declined to block the release of Trump’s financial records for a New York state investigation, and in 2020 it
upheld Congress’s right to subpoena that information with some limitations.