Trump Is Desperately Trying To Prevent The Release Of His Tax Returns

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Donald Trump has sent his lawyers to court to argue that the Treasury Department CANNOT release his tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. Their argument is that there isn't a legitimate legislation reason to release the information, but technically one isn't needed - but Democrats have given a reason, nonetheless. Trump doesn't have a legal leg to stand on in this matter, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Last week, as we all know, the US department of justice came out and said that the US treasury department has to release Donald Trump's tax returns to the Democratic controlled House ways and means committee. Ways and means has been trying to get their hands on these tax documents for years and last week it appeared that hey, those documents were going to be on their way. But Donald Trump and his legal team say not so fast. And they finally, several days after this all happened, came up with what they believe is a stellar legal argument that is totally going to prevent the release of this tax information. And their argument of course, is this it's the same argument they've had the whole time, this release of information, the seeking of the tax returns themselves is not based on any legislative action and therefore they say the ways and means committee has absolutely no legal claim to them whatsoever, case closed. Yeah, but see, after many, many, many years of hearing this same thing, the Democrats on the House ways and means committee say, actually, we do have a legitimate legislative reason for seeking these.

Here it is. They said they want the tax data to determine whether the IRS is properly auditing presidential tax returns in general and to assess whether new legislation is needed. Now, the lawyers say that this is just a pretextual rationalization, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If your argument is only that they don't have a legislative reason to do it. And they're telling you actually, we do, because we need to see if the IRS needs to change the way that they, uh, audit presidential tax returns. That's a reason. You may not like the reason. The reason may be pretextual, but it's a reason and you've been saying they don't have a reason. They're giving you a reason. You just lost your case and by the way, me saying they just lost the case not coming from me. It's actually coming from legal scholars who are looking at this saying, yeah, you're not going to win this one. The only hope he has obviously is that the highly partisan US Supreme Court rules in his favor, which is a very real possibility. But please understand in the event that that happens, that's not actually based on law. That's not because it was the legal thing to do.

It's because they were protecting Donald Trump. The question is now, as it has always been, what the hell is Trump hiding? Why is he fighting this so hard? And I honestly believe the answer is super simple. I don't think it's criminal activity, don't get me wrong, I think that the dude is engaged in criminal activity and that's going to be fleshed out in New York. I do believe he's engaged in criminal activity. But I don't think the tax returns would show that. I think the bigger issue he has is that the tax returns would show that he doesn't have as much money as he claims to have. That embarrassment from that to him is worse than criminal charges because he thinks he can get away with anything. He's not afraid of, of crime. He's afraid of embarrassment. He's afraid of hits to his ego. And that is why I am firmly convinced and I'd love to be proven wrong because if I'm proven wrong, then that means he's got criminal to hide. So hey, either way I win. Right.