Republicans are saying they will ask the courts to infer unconstitutional motives as the basis for striking down the Democrats’ request for Trump’s tax returns, and to do so without any evidentiary basis for the inference
Republicans are attacking Chairman Richard Neal’s request (House Ways and Means Committee) for Trump’s tax returns.
Rs have made questioning the INTENTION of the committee majority fundamental to their attacks. (According to them, the request is politically motivated.)1/9
This is probably going to court, the way the Trump-Bannon-Miller Muslim ban did.2/9
Trump’s executive order (which only survived in a mutilated, almost incoherent form after numerous amendments had to be made to it) was struck down by a number of courts 3/9
on the grounds that Trump’s very public statements during the campaign and after the election showed the ban to be a clear violation of the First Amendment (freedom of religion). 4/9
The House Ways and Means Committee’s request is quite different. It has been predicated very carefully on Congress’ oversight authority, and the language of the statute is perfectly clear. 5/9
Courts, therefore, will be in a very different position in ruling on the constitutionality of the request by the House Ways and Means Committee than they were in with Trump’s blatant anti-Muslim executive order. 6/9
In the present case, Rs will be asking courts to INFER unconstitutional motives as the basis for striking down the committee’s request, and to do so without any evidentiary basis for the inference. 7/9
(The basis of the Republic attack is, quite simply, the one that Republican Senator Kennedy articulated the other day: that one would have to be stupid to believe that Democrats had any other motive.) 8/9
Bottom line: A ruling in favor of Republicans on a case with this posture would inevitably provoke an unmanageable cascade of legal challenges to future legislative actions. It is hard to see how courts could possibly agree with Republicans on this one. 9/9
