There are too many laws to cite as to why it is important the holder of the presidency needs to have their financial ties vetted by congress and this is normally done through the financial disclosure form when a person registers to run for President. Trump’s disclosure was a joke. Candidates have released returns in the past and those get analyzed without much ado. Trump has not released his returns and associated filings AND there has been credible allegations made by his associates of wrongdoing with regard to his business practices and taxes. Also: His foundation was shut down for impropriety and Numerous publications by the press of financial misdoings. That is enough for congress to pull those records and review and be in full spirit of oversight responsibilities. Your argument is merely a complaint meant to mitigate and does not address the core issues. While there is some motivation politically, it is not the only motivation and if congress were shot down every time there could be any political motivation associated with oversight responsibility then it would bring the constitutional mandate of oversight to a screeching halt. Ways and means should investigate for the purpose of crafting law as well. There is currently no law on the books requiring presidential candidates to release returns. Trump’s returns may be useful in crafting that law. That is all. End of story.
The request was made to the IRS, not Trump. While the irs should rightly oppose this request legally, as they should try to protect all tax information, and I’m sure trump will use the presidency to direct the irs to block anyway, this is going to court regardless.
End of story if you go with the lefty assumption that we no longer have a constitution. You can pass laws but the issue then becomes whether they can be enforced or what the remedy/penalties are if they are not. Meanwhile, I dont acknowledge the authority of Congress to pass requirements for running for president beyond what is specified in the Constitution- whether it be tax returns, releasing medical records, whatever. Nope. Not sayin that it might not be useful to see the medical records of the candidates so that we can see how many abortions that some of them have had. Nope. No authority there, unless you want to amend the constitution. As I said, I am not disagreeing that there could be political consequences to not doing certain things but that is the nature of campaigns. You work it out on the playground.
I disagree. Financial disclosure forms are legal and required since like 1970 something. Extending some veracity requirements should not be an issue from a constitutional standpoint. As to working it out on the playground, it’s already happening. We can just agree to disagree and see how this plays out.
Lois Lerner wasn’t wrong. Session’s did this country a great disservice paying off those phony right wing orgs.
No need to go whoa. At the time there were many scam non profits popping up under the guise of being tea party organizations. They were schemes to pay upwards of 40% of funds raised to founders, sometimes amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The IRS was rightly targeting the scammers. Where they fell awry was in profiling their targets. They created certain characteristics and applied them to organizations, many rightly but some not. It’s all fun and games thinking you can profile people like with the Arizona papers law or how the right wing says we can for terrorists until of course it’s your side that gets caught up in the profilings. No you want to cry about it because some right wing groups got caught up but you’d be inconsistent with the rights views of profiling by and large.