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THE BIG DEAL—Supreme Court upholds NY prosecutors’ access to Trump’s tax returns, rebuffs Congress: The Supreme Court in a split decision on Thursday sided with New York state prosecutors seeking President Trump’s tax returns, even as it shielded a trove of his financial records from Congress.
The justices upheld a Manhattan district attorney subpoena for eight years of Trump’s financial documents, including his personal and corporate tax returns. But they declined to grant Congress access to records subpoenaed by a trio of Democratic-led House committees. Both cases were decided by a 7-2 vote.
What happens next:
- The ruling in the New York dispute makes it more likely that Trump’s tax returns are eventually made public, though it’s unclear if they would be disclosed before the November general election.
- More fundamentally, the decision flatly rejects Trump’s argument that a sitting president enjoys absolute immunity from investigations.
“In our judicial system, ‘the public has a right to every man’s evidence,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “Since the earliest days of the Republic, ‘every man’ has included the President of the United States.”
The Hill’s John Kruzel explains here.
The background: Trump’s tax returns and financial records have been closely watched since his 2016 presidential campaign. He is the first president in decades to refuse to make any of his tax returns public, noting that he is under audit, though the IRS has said that does not prevent Trump from voluntary disclosure.
- The New York case arose after Cyrus Vance Jr., the Democratic district attorney for Manhattan, obtained a grand jury subpoena for Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA.
- Vance’s office is looking into payments made to silence two women who allege they had affairs with Trump, including adult-film star Stormy Daniels, before he became president.
The second case, involving four congressional subpoenas, arose after three House committees pursued a lengthy paper trail of Trump’s personal and corporate records. Broadly speaking, each Democratic-led committee said the materials were necessary to carry out their legislative and oversight functions.
- The House Oversight and Reform Committee argued its subpoena of Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, was needed to inform rules governing ethics, conflicts of interest and presidential financial disclosure.
- Another set of subpoenas, from the House Financial Services Committee, requested records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One as a follow-up on press reports that Deutsche Bank staffers had raised concerns that Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were linked to illicit financial activity.
- The House Intelligence Committee also subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, but its focus was on Kremlin efforts to interfere in U.S. elections and whether Russian or other foreign nationals have financial leverage over Trump.
Read more:
- Five takeaways from Supreme Court’s rulings on Trump tax returns
- Supreme Court rulings reignite Trump oversight wars in Congress
- Trump complains of ‘political prosecution’ after SCOTUS rulings on financial records
LEADING THE DAY
Biden strikes populist tone in blistering rebuke of Trump, Wall Street: Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden unveiled his $700 billion jobs plan on Thursday from Pennsylvania, where he offered a blistering rebuke of President Trump’s economic agenda and vowed to crack down on Wall Street and the corporations he said have benefited at the expense of average workers.
Speaking from a manufacturing plant in Dunmore, Penn., near his hometown of Scranton, Biden struck a populist tone, saying he’d put an end to the era of “shareholder capitalism” and raise taxes on large corporations if he is elected president.
“During this crisis, Donald Trump has been almost singularly focused on the stock market, the Dow and the Nasdaq. Not you. Not your families,” Biden said. “If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I’ll be laser focused on middle class families, the working class families like where I came from in Scranton.”
The Hill’s Jonathan Easley takes us there.
Inside Biden’s jobs plan: Earlier in the day, Biden released the first leg of his $700 billion jobs plan, which he said would create 5 million new American jobs, in addition to recapturing the jobs that were lost during the coronavirus-induced slowdown.
- The plan includes a $400 billion investment in federal purchases of American products, such as steel, cement, concrete and other materials that will be used to rebuild U.S. infrastructure.
- The plan also calls for a $300 billion investment in research and development for emerging technologies, including electric vehicles, 5G, artificial intelligence and lightweight materials.
- Outside of the direct spending, Biden proposed new credit facilities and tax breaks for small manufacturers, particularly those run by women and people of color
Mnuchin: Next stimulus bill must cap jobless benefits: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday that the Trump administration is unwilling to extend a boost to unemployment benefits amid the coronavirus pandemic if it allows jobless workers to make more money than they did before losing their jobs.
In a Thursday interview with CNBC, Mnuchin said that any extension of enhanced unemployment insurance would cap benefits at “no more than 100 percent” of what the recipient made before becoming unemployed.
- The $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed by President Trump in March added $600 to unemployment insurance in every state.
- The boost, which expires on July 31, was intended to help workers in industries derailed by the pandemic support themselves and continue spending money amid the lockdowns imposed to slow the pandemic.
- The future of the increased benefit is one of the most contentious issues facing lawmakers as they craft another stimulus package.
Economists credit the enhanced unemployment benefits, among other stimulus efforts, with preventing a deeper plunge in economic activity. But many Republicans have expressed regrets about the boost because it pushed unemployment benefits above the average wage in many states.
“We were in an emergency. We went along with that,” Mnuchin said. “We’re going to make sure that people are incented to go back to jobs.”
I’ve got more here.
House panel approves bill funding WHO, paring back abortion restrictions: The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a foreign policy bill that would ensure funds flow to the World Health Organization (WHO) and pare back the Trump administration’s abortion-related restrictions on foreign organizations.
- The committee approved the $65.87 billion state and foreign operations appropriations bill on a party-line vote of 29-21, after considering several key policy amendments.
- The bill dismissed President Trump’s request to cut funding from the State Department and related agencies by 20 percent.
The Democratic-controlled House is expected to take up the bill at the end of the month, but some of its most controversial provisions will face opposition in the GOP-controlled Senate.
The Hill’s Niv Elis breaks it down here.
GOOD TO KNOW
- Initial jobless claims continued to fall last week, even as a slew of states hard-hit by COVID-19 reintroduced restrictions.
- House Democrats on Thursday advanced an amendment that would restore millions of dollars in aid to Palestinians cut by the Trump administration two years earlier, as part of a multibillion-dollar spending bill under consideration.
- Business groups and economists are calling on Americans to embrace face masks as the best way to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and accelerate the recovery from the pandemic-driven recession.
- Bed Bath & Beyond will permanently close 200 stores within the next two years, the company announced on Wednesday.