Court Says Trump's Tax Documents Must Be Handed Over To House Committee

Donald Trump's bad week just got so much worse, as an appellate court ruled that he can no longer shield his tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee. Trump has been fighting this battle for a very long time, and it looks like the battle could finally be coming to a close as the panel of judges rejected ALL of the arguments that his legal team made. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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

This week just continues to get worse and worse for Donald Trump. The day after Donald Trump had his home at Mar Lago raid by the FBI, a three judge panel on an appellate court in DC told Donald Trump and his lawyers that guess what? You can no longer shield your tax returns from the house ways and means committee. That of course has been trying to get a hold of Trump's tax returns for many years now. So his home gets rated by the FBI, a three judge panel, which included two judges appointed by conservative presidents. One appointed by Obama said, Hey, you can't hide your tax returns anymore. We're gonna tell the IRS that they have to turn them over to the democratic controlled house ways and means committee because your legal argument is garbage.

So in case anybody hasn't been following along with this story for the last few years, or maybe you've forgotten due to all of the other scandals and court cases involving Donald Trump, here's a quick recap. Donald Trump's legal team has been arguing for years that the house of representatives cannot have Donald Trump's tax returns because they don't want them for any real legitimate, legislative purpose. They just want them, you know, to embarrass Donald Trump. And when they first came up with that argument, the house, uh, uh, committees, because there were two of 'em at the time said, actually, actually we do have a legislative purpose because there there's something called the, uh, presidential audit program. And we write the legislation for that. And we kind of need to see his tax returns to see if maybe we need to make any changes to that legislation. So you said we don't have a legislative reason, but we're giving you the legislative reason.

You know, whether that's really why they want them or not. That's debatable because I'm gonna be honest. I don't think that is actually why they want them. I don't think anybody thinks that's why they want them. But at the same time, the house committees actually do have the authority. And we talked about this again many, many years ago, they actually have the authority to request the tax returns from any American citizen at all, at any time. So even off the bat, even if they didn't have a legitimate legislative purpose, they still have the authority to request these tax documents again from any one of us. So it wouldn't matter if Trump says, no, it's not for legislation. They'd be like, we don't care. We have the authority to do it, hand it over. We just wanna see 'em, but they're giving a legislative reason. And of course the three judge panel said, Hey, that's a legitimate reason. Therefore, your legal argument saying, you can't have them is complete trash. So Trump loses again. He

Will undoubtedly appeal, which means this will likely go in front of the us Supreme court. So at that point, it's really anybody's guess as to what's gonna happen because as I always point out, yeah, you got three Trump appointees on there. You got a six, three Republican majority. They're likely to protect him, but if they protect him, they're not only protecting him. They're also protecting any democratic president as well. And Republicans don't want to do that. So they have to tread very carefully here because whenever privilege that Supreme court may give to Donald Trump, they're also giving it to everybody else who holds that office ever. And that may give them a little bit of pause to think, you know what?