Go Nakamura | Reuters Former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a judge’s order that the IRS give years of his tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee later this week. The request to delay the execution of the court order pending a planned appeal came days after Trump lost an attempt to overturn the order in a federal appeals court. “This case raises important separation of powers questions that will affect any future President,” Trump’s lawyers said in their emergency filing with Chief Justice John Roberts. The chief justice has jurisdiction over such petitions from cases arising from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Trump’s lawyers asked the court to act by Wednesday to delay the appeals court ruling that cleared the way for the IRS to hand over the tax returns on Thursday. The delay will give Trump time to formally ask the high court to consider an appeal of the ruling. But lawyers also said the Supreme Court could consider Monday’s filing a request to hear the case. The filing accused the committee of seeking to obtain Trump’s tax returns solely for the purpose of releasing them, not to review IRS audits of presidents, as the House committee said. Trump’s lawyer, William Consovoy, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. If the Supreme Court grants Trump’s petition, it could block the Democratic-controlled commission from receiving the returns for several more years — at least. A Supreme Court case challenging the order could take months or more to resolve. And if Republicans regain majority control of the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections, before the Supreme Court case is resolved, they are expected to end the Ways and Means Committee’s three-year effort to obtain Trump’s tax returns. That committee sought Trump’s tax records and those of related business entities as part of an investigation into how the Internal Revenue Service audits presidential tax returns. The IRS, which is a division of the Treasury Department, is legally authorized to audit the annual tax returns of sitting presidents. The committee sued to obtain Trump’s federal returns for the years 2015 to 2020 after then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to comply with the committee’s request. Trump appointee Mnuchin said the committee had no legitimate legislative purpose.
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Read more about CNBC’s political coverage: Last December, Washington federal court judge Trevor McFadden, who was appointed by Trump, ruled that the Treasury Department had to turn over the tax returns as requested. McFadden said that even if the commission’s request was politically motivated, as Trump claimed, its chairman had stated a “valid legislative purpose” in seeking the returns, as required by law. Trump then appealed McFadden’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In August, a three-judge panel on that appeals court unanimously ruled against Trump. The committee noted that while tax returns are generally confidential under federal law, an exception is when the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee requests such returns in writing from the secretary of the Treasury. “The President has identified a legitimate legislative purpose that requires information to accomplish,” Judge David Sendel wrote in the panel’s opinion. “At this stage, it’s not our place to go any deeper than that.” Trump then asked the same court to review his appeal in a so-called en banc hearing, in which most of the court’s judges will consider his arguments. On Thursday, a 10-judge panel on the appeals court unanimously rejected Trump’s request. The same panel of judges rejected a request by Trump to stay its denial pending his expected appeal to the Supreme Court. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal said in a statement Thursday: “The law has always been on our side. Former President Trump tried to delay the inevitable, but once again, the Court reaffirmed the power of the position us”. “We’ve waited long enough — we need to begin our oversight of the IRS mandatory presidential audit program as soon as possible,” Neal said.
