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Supreme Court keeps Trump taxes private for now

WASHINGTON
(AP) — Rejecting President Donald Trump’s complaints that he’s being
harassed, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of a New York
prosecutor’s demands for the billionaire president’s tax records. But in
good political news for Trump, his taxes and other financial records
almost certainly will be kept out of the public eye at least until after
the November election.

In a separate case, the justices kept a hold on banking and other documents about Trump, family members and his businesses that Congress has been seeking for more than a year. The court said that while Congress has significant power to demand the president’s personal information, it is not limitless.

The
court turned away the broadest arguments by Trump’s lawyers and the
Justice Department that the president is immune from investigation while
he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than
normal to obtain the tax records. But it is unclear when a lower court
judge might order the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena to be
enforced.

Trump is the only president in modern times who has
refused to make his tax returns public, and before he was elected he
promised to release them. He didn’t embrace Thursday’s outcome as a
victory even though it is likely to prevent his opponents in Congress
from obtaining potentially embarrassing personal and business records
ahead of Election Day.

In fact, the increasing likelihood that a
grand jury will eventually get to examine the documents drove the
president into a public rage. He lashed out declaring that “It’s a pure
witch hunt, it’s a hoax” and calling New York, where he has lived most
of his life, “a hellhole.”

The documents have the potential to
reveal details on everything from possible misdeeds to the true nature
of the president’s vaunted wealth – not to mention uncomfortable
disclosures about how he’s spent his money and how much he’s given to
charity.

The rejection of Trump’s claims of presidential immunity
marked the latest instance where his broad assertion of executive power
has been rejected.

Trump’s two high court appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh,
joined the majority in both cases along with Chief Justice John Roberts
and the four liberal justices. Roberts wrote both opinions.

“Congressional
subpoenas for information from the President, however, implicate
special concerns regarding the separation of powers. The courts below
did not take adequate account of those concerns,” Roberts wrote in the
congressional case.

But Roberts also wrote that Trump was asking
for too much. “The standards proposed by the President and the Solicitor
General—if applied outside the context of privileged information—would
risk seriously impeding Congress in carrying out its responsibilities,”
the chief justice wrote.

The ruling returns the congressional case to lower courts, with no clear prospect for when it might ultimately be resolved.

Promising
to keep pressing the case in the lower courts, House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi said Thursday’s decision “is not good news for President Trump.”

“The
Court has reaffirmed the Congress’s authority to conduct oversight on
behalf of the American people,” Pelosi said in a statement.

The
tax returns case also is headed back to a lower court. Mazars USA,
Trump’s accounting firm, holds the tax returns and has indicated it
would comply with a court order. Because the grand jury process is
confidential, Trump’s taxes normally would not be made public.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said his investigation, on hold while the court fight played out, will now resume.

“This
is a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its
founding principle that no one — not even a president — is above the
law, ” Vance said said.

Even with his broadest arguments rejected,
Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal lawyer, said he was pleased that the
“Supreme Court has temporarily blocked both Congress and New York
prosecutors from obtaining the President’s financial records. We will
now proceed to raise additional Constitutional and legal issues in the
lower courts.”

Justice Samuel Alito, who dissented with Justice
Clarence Thomas in both cases, warned that future presidents would
suffer because of the decision about Trump’s taxes.

“While the
decision will of course have a direct effect on President Trump, what
the Court holds today will also affect all future Presidents—which is to
say, it will affect the Presidency, and that is a matter of great and
lasting importance to the Nation,” Alito wrote.

The case was argued by telephone in May because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The
fight over the congressional subpoenas has significant implications
regarding a president’s power to refuse a formal request from Congress.
In a separate fight at the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.,
over a congressional demand for the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn,
the administration is making broad arguments that the president’s close
advisers are “absolutely immune” from having to appear.

In two
earlier cases over presidential power, the Supreme Court acted
unanimously in requiring Richard Nixon to turn over White House tapes to
the Watergate special prosecutor and in allowing a sexual harassment
lawsuit against Bill Clinton to go forward.

In those cases, three
Nixon appointees and two Clinton appointees, respectively, voted
against the president who chose them for the high court. A fourth Nixon
appointee, William Rehnquist, sat out the tapes case because he had
worked closely as a Justice Department official with some of the
Watergate conspirators whose upcoming trial spurred the subpoena for the
Oval Office recordings.

The subpoenas are not directed at Trump
himself. Instead, House committees want records from Deutsche Bank,
Capital One and Mazars.

Appellate courts in Washington, D.C., and
New York brushed aside Trump’s arguments in decisions that focused on
the fact that the subpoenas were addressed to third parties asking for
records of his business and financial dealings as a private citizen, not
as president.

Two congressional committees subpoenaed the bank
documents as part of their investigations into Trump and his businesses.
Deutsche Bank has been one of the few banks willing to lend to Trump
after a series of corporate bankruptcies and defaults starting in the
early 1990s.

Vance and the House Oversight and Reform Committee sought records from Mazars concerning Trump and his businesses based on payments that Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged to keep two women from airing their claims of decade-old extramarital affairs with Trump during the 2016 presidential race.

Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.