The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for Donald Trump's tax returns to be handed over to Congress after a three-year legal fight.
The former President's pleas for an order that would block the Treasury Department from giving six years of tax information to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, were ignored by the Republican-backed court.
This is Trump's second loss at the Supreme Court in as many months.
Last month, the court refused to step into the legal fight surrounding the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida estate, that turned up classified documents.
During Trump's presidency, the Treasury Department had refused to provide the records but the Biden administration said federal law is clear that the committee has the right to examine any taxpayer’s returns.
With Republicans set to take control of the House Ways and Means Committee in January, any further delay ordered by the Supreme Court could have put to bed the chances of Trump's tax returns coming to light.
During the Trump administration the then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin witheld the tax returns from Congress arguing they were being sought by Democrats for partisan reasons.
Last month, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s plea to step into the legal fight over the FBI search of his Florida estate.
The justices did not otherwise comment in turning away Trump’s emergency appeal, which called on the court to overturn an earlier decision to not allow an independent arbiter to review the roughly 100 classified documents that were taken in the August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.
The move greatly reduced the potential impact of any independent arbiter process to the ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation into the classifed documents.
