Preposterous
The Justice Department agrees with Trump that he doesn’t have to show anyone his tax returns if he doesn’t want to, so there.
The Justice Department released Friday its legal opinion supporting the Treasury secretary’s refusal to hand over President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Last month, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal issued a subpoena to Treasury and the IRS after the agencies rebuffed the Democrat’s request for six years of the President’s personal and business tax returns. Neal is invoking a little-known provision of the tax code which states the Treasury Secretary “shall furnish” the committee with the return information.
Legal experts are not impressed.
Preposterous.https://t.co/j1WVeR7IRp
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) June 14, 2019
This is a pretty aggressive argument from DOJ, basically saying that Congress is lying about its purpose for wanting the president's tax returns and that as a result, the IRS need not provide them even though the statute doesn't require Congress to have *any* reason. pic.twitter.com/u4xzzz5pPN
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) June 14, 2019
Justice Dept. issues legal opinion backing Mnuchin's refusal to turn over Trump's tax returns to Congress. Utterly bogus legal argument. William Barr is not following his oath to be Attorney General of the United States. He is more like a mob lawyer for the Trump Syndicate.
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) June 14, 2019
In stunning news on the tax return front, William Barr's DOJ comes up with a transparently absurd legal opinion that ignores the plain language of federal law in order to — you'll never guess — come out exactly however best serves Trump. https://t.co/nOTHeB0MIM
— Elie Honig (@eliehonig) June 14, 2019
For some reason (propaganda, I guess), I have always thought that the USA, with all its faults, had a good system of government. Checks and balances, constitutional amendments, and all the etc. But, really, it was made of wet tissue. There is nothing left.
Where do you go from here?
Nowhere good.
It is fairly straightforward.
The US is not a democracy. It is ruled by someone who was not selected by the majority in an either/or question.
The US is not a republic, because the rule of law is not paramount.
Somehow, the world’s pre-eminent democratic republic has backed into a time where it may now be neither of those things, and is seeming unaware of it.
A nice, pithy summary of Trump’s goon-filled administration at the Guardian. Goddy-two-shoes Pence’s brother is spending campaign funds to stay in Trump’s hotel, Elaine Chao is funneling federal funds to her husbands pet projects, Kushy’s real estate company is $90m up from secret foreign investors (including Saudi investors, you’ll be shocked to hear).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/15/welcome-to-trumps-corrupt-state-the-star-wars-cantina-of-world-politics