Hmmm ... did they make the same bogus arguments to a judge?
reading now . . .
Basically, they're just denying that Congress has a valid legislative reason for requesting the taxes.
Trump is on extremely weak footing and I don't expect this to go far.
Section 6103(f) of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 6103(f), requires in mandatory terms that Treasury “shall furnish” the Committee with “any” requested tax return information.
This means turning over the tax records is mandatory.
When Trump was president he was able to make some [extremely lame] arguments that he can't even make now. Those lame arguments allowed for stalling.
We expect his lawyers to continue lying to the public as they did in the statement I took apart in my Washington Post piece. . .
But for a former president (and ordinary citizen) to argue that a statute that says "shall" doesn't apply to me because I don't like what the government is doing and because I'm Super Special really won't fly.
They don't claim that the law itself requiring the IRS to furnish the records to Congress is unconstitutional.
They just argue (basically) that Super Special Trump shouldn't have to comply because Big Bad Congress is being really mean to him.
I can't imagine what. The law is the law.
Arguably, the court shouldn't even assess whether Congress has a valid reason for the request, but there could be extreme case in which Congress abuses its powers. Imagine if McCarthy and Nunes were in charge.
As @ruthbenghiat explains in her book on Strongmen, autocrats and would-be autocrats tend to come to power when they have the backing of conservative "elites."
They tend to lose power when they lose the backing of the conservative elites.
So just as these conservative elites are at least partly responsible for the fact that Trump came to power in the first place, it's also true that his coup failed because enough of them put on the breaks.
After I refill my ☕️ I'll come back and attempt a concise Twitter summary.
2/
It should be obvious that the Republican leadership is deliberately cultivating a lawless, rule-breaking base bent on undermining the government, but I'll attach some evidence . . .
3/
It's also bad news for Trump, who no doubt planned to make the same argument.
(The defense is that the speech these guys gave on Jan. 6 was within the scope of their employment so they're entitled to the DOJ defending them. The DOJ said nope.)
Here's the document: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2101…
The DOJ is calling his activities "campaigning and electioneering," which isn't part of his duties as a Congressman.
Also "it is no part of the business of the United States to pick sides among candidates in federal elections."
🔥
Actually, Trump did make the same argument in this case.
The 14th Amendment (which says that any elected officials who incite insurrection can not run again for office) creates an interesting loop.
If they are guilty of what they're charged with, the DOJ can't defend them.