The Supreme Court’s stay of a congressional demand for Donald Trump’s taxes is almost certainly the final nail in the coffin of Democrats’ efforts to investigate the former president’s finances. If — as is widely expected — Republicans take control of the House in next week’s midterm election, the demand could be withdrawn before the documents are handed over. The court is likely to rule against Trump before the new Congress takes office on Jan. 3, 2023, but he will realistically be able to stonewall until then — and avoid meaningful consequences.
As a reminder, the House Ways and Means Committee has been trying for three years to get Trump’s tax records from the Internal Revenue Service. Trump says this is a thinly veiled pretext to get the returns and make them public. The committee says it needs the returns to evaluate the rigor of a Watergate-era policy called the Presidential Audit Program, implemented after both President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew were caught in scandals about evading taxes.
There’s plenty of reason to be angry that this process has taken so long. But the problem is not with the Supreme Court. It’s that a federal district judge appointed by Trump, Trevor N. McFadden, declined to issue a decision in the case for more than two years before ruling (correctly) that the House committee was entitled to see the tax returns under a federal law that gives it access. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has since affirmed the district court’s ruling.
