Dems Dealt Huge Blow In Effort To Get Their Claws On Trump Tax Returns

Democrats suffered a blow in their efforts to get their hands on President Trump’s tax returns with the Justice Department delivering a stinging rebuke to a party that has become accustomed to abuses of power.

Ever since the run-up to the fateful 2016 election, Trump’s enemies have been trying to pry loose the returns which they have treated as the Holy Grail. Following the 2018 midterms and the flipping of the House into enemy hands, Democrats have intensified their efforts.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal went to the extraordinary length of subpoenaing six years of returns that the Democrats could then leak to their media allies disguised as oppo-research to undermine Trump’s reelection chances and are at loggerheads with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin who has faced calls from rabid liberals for his imprisonment.

On Friday, Mnuchin, Trump, and America just got a big assist from the Justice Department in the form of a memo from the Office Of Legal Counsel that slammed the House demands on the basis of that the pursuit of the returns lacked a legitimate legislative purpose.

Via The Hill, “Justice releases legal opinion backing Treasury’s refusal to release Trump tax returns”:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday released a legal opinion backing up the Treasury Department’s decision to reject a request by congressional Democrats for six years of President Trump’s tax returns.

“While the Executive Branch should accord due deference and respect to congressional requests, Treasury was not obliged to accept the Committee’s stated purpose without question, and based on all the facts and circumstances, we agreed that the Committee lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for its request,” Steven Engel, an assistant attorney general in DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, said in the 33-page opinion.

The opinion comes after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last month rejected a subpoena from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) demanding Trump’s personal and business tax returns from 2013 through 2018.

When Mnuchin rejected Neal’s request, he said he did so upon the advice of DOJ, and that the Justice Department would publish a legal opinion with its advice.

According to the OLC:

…Congress could not constitutionally confer upon the Committee the right to compel the Executive Branch to disclose confidential information without a legitimate legislative purpose.
Under the facts and circumstances, the Secretary of the Treasury reasonably and correctly concluded that the Committee’s asserted interest in reviewing the Internal Revenue Service’s audits of presidential returns was pretextual and that its true aim was to make the President’s tax returns public, which is not a legitimate legislative purpose.

AND

“No one could reasonably believe that the Committee seeks six years of President Trump’s tax returns because of a newly discovered interest in legislating on the presidential-audit process,” DOJ wrote. “The Committee’s request reflects the next assay in a longstanding political battle over the President’s tax returns.”

It is at least a temporary victory for all citizens whose tax returns face being seized by a party that has become increasingly fascist and enamored with police state tactics and weaponized against them.

The basis for the demands is an archaic 1924 law that in the same way that Barack Obama used the 1917 Espionage Act against journalists and whistleblowers, shows that the left’s legal eagles are working 24/7 to unearth methods to use against their political enemies.

The usual array of authoritarian freaks have now moved on from the sadness of the Mueller report dud and will be spinning a whacky web of conspiracy theories about AG William Barr and a sinister coverup that only exists in their own pathetic minds.

As Senator Klobuchar’s tweet indicated, look for the 20 Democrats in the upcoming debates seize on the Justice Department smackdown and to demand that AG Barr and Mnuchin be impeached right along with Trump.