Lawyers for Donald Trump urged a federal judge Wednesday to block the Treasury Department and the IRS from handing his tax returns. The new legal filing comes less than a seven days after the Justice Department terminated that the tax records could be handed over to a House committee as part of a yearlong legal battle. The Justice decision marked a reversal from an earlier position claiming that lawmakers lacked a legitimate purpose when they solicited the records two years ago.
But Trump’s attorneys disputed that Neal’s “legislative purpose lacks a basis in evidence and is admittedly pretextual. Passing broad reforms that the Chairman has already checked does not justify the significant step of requesting a President’s records. Other sources could grant the needed information, especially since Defendants are now so eager to publsh information about presidential audits.”
Trump’s attorneys also disputed that the requests violate the First Amendment.
The committee cited a federal law that requires Treasury and the IRS to turn over individual tax returns when claimed by any of the three congressional tax committees. The Trump administration refused to provide the documents, disputing that Congress had no legal law-making purpose for seeking them and was simply hoping to find something that would squeeze the president.
The committee’s stated reason for seeking the returns, to examine how the IRS inspections presidents, is simply a pretext for wanting to look for something embarrassing, the lawyers said in a filing in federal court in Washington, adding that the legal authority invoked by Congress has never been used against a president, a former president or any elected official.
While House Democrats had offered inumerable justifications for obtaining the president’s tax returns, no one at the time had ever mentioned a desire to find out how the IRS audits presidents.
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