SCOTUS Confirms Trump Not Above The Law

On June 9th, 2020, the Supreme Court issued its decision in three cases related to Trump’s financial records: Trump v. Vance,Trump v. Mazars, and Trump v. Deutsche Bank. These rulings make clear that no one — not even the president of the United States — is above the law. The Supreme Court has confirmed what the American people have been declaring for three years: Donald Trump cannot escape oversight and he owes the nation the truth about his financial misdeeds.

These decisions won’t ensure that the public will see Trump’s taxes this year, but they will force the president to respond to prosecutors’ subpoenas for his financial records, and will give congressional investigators the ability to continue their court fight to obtain Trump’s taxes.

While a president is not required by law to release their tax returns, every single elected president since Nixon has made theirs public. Trump broke decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns after promising multiple times during his presidential candidacy that he would. 

For three years, Stand Up America and Tax March have worked together to force the public release of Trump’s tax returns, from organizing marches across the country to pressuring congressional investigators to request their release. The Stand Up America community has made important progress toward exposing Trump’s tax schemes, conflicts of interest, and foreign entanglements — from fighting successfully to pass the TRUST Act in New York State, a law that allows Congress to ask New York for six years of Trump’s state tax returns, to making over 10,000 calls and sending thousands of emails, messages, and tweets to Congress to demand that Chairman Neal request Trump’s taxes.

Why is it so important to see Trump’s full financial documents? From the records we have seen, we know that Trump has routinely gamed the tax system to pay less than his fair share. Reporting by The New York Times on Trump’s financial records between 1985 and 1994 reveal a man on the brink of financial ruin who used “dubious tax schemes” and outright fraud to make millions. During that ten-year period, Trump first appeared on the Forbes list of the most wealthy Americans, yet he claimed on tax returns to have suffered over a billion dollars in business losses. For eight of those ten years, Trump did not pay a single cent in income tax. 

We pledge to continue fighting for the public release of Trump’s taxes and for legislation like H.R.1, which requires every candidate for president and vice president to publicly release their finances. The American people deserve the truth, they deserve transparency, they deserve accountability — and they deserve it now. Thanks to these Supreme Court decisions, we’re so much closer to making that a reality.