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WASHINGTON — President Trump’s tax returns will stay secret — for now.
Trump just won a temporary victory in a pair of Supreme Court decisions that will allow him to hold onto his tax returns for at least the near future — and quite likely through the 2020 election.
The Supreme Court sent both cases involving subpoenas for his financial records back down to lower courts to be argued further. The high court didn’t leave Trump exempt from having to answer subpoenas down the line, but decided that, for the moment, Trump’s financial advisors won’t have to turn his innermost secret documents over to Congress or New York prosecutors in the immediate future.
The decisions, which sent the cases back down to the lower courts for further analysis, mark a stunning setback for those hoping to take a good, long look at Trump’s financial secrets before the 2020 election. Trump has been promising to make them public ever since the early days of his presidential campaign over four years ago. But he’s been fighting like hell in court to keep them secret since then.
Trump, however, wasn't in the mood to celebrate. He apparently felt he should have crushed his enemies in a final legal battle in the high court. Moments after the decision, he tweeted that forcing him to “keep fighting” is “not fair.”
Trump will now have to continue trying to block the subpoenas, from Manhattan’s District Attorney, Cy Vance, and Democratic Congressional committees, which have asked his banks and accounting firm to hand over years’ worth of financial documents.
In one case, Vance subpoenaed Trump’s records in connection with an investigation into hush-money payouts to women who said they slept with Trump prior to the 2016 election — payments that already sent Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to prison.
The high court ruled Trump is not somehow immune, as his lawyers had argued, from that subpoena just because he is president. But the justices also ruled that he could raise other arguments in the lower courts that hadn’t yet been made like a normal American. And that could easily take months.
“A president may avail himself of the same protections available to every other citizen, including the right to challenge the subpoena on any grounds permitted by state law,” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the first decision, Trump v. Vance. But, Roberts wrote, “absent a need to protect the executive, the public interest in fair and effective law enforcement cuts in favor of comprehensive access to evidence.”
Cover: President Donald Trump speaks during a "Salute to America" event on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, July 4, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
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