This is a fight Donald Trump can’t win
Steve Mnuchin is illegally withholding Trump’s taxes on the laughable notion that the request for them “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose”. This will effectively stall the process while it winds its way up to the Supreme Court. Historically, filing lawsuits has been the go-to defense Trump uses whenever he’s faced with something he doesn’t like.
Whether it’s a legitimate bill from a contractor he doesn’t feel like paying or the feared exposure of hush money, Trump uses the court system to wear out and weaken his opponents. This has usually resulted in negotiating significant decreases in money owed by him and/or the Trump Organization. It has also ended in lowering hush money payments and strong-arming non-disclosure agreements.
Throughout his life, this process has been wildly successful for Trump. He has rights, he knows it, and more importantly he’s had the money for lawyers to enforce those rights. But guess who has more money? The United States. Not only is the IRS loaded with coin to finance protracted lawsuits created on behalf of Mnuchin’s puppeteer, Trump, but, unfortunately for Trump, so does the New York Attorney General Letitia James.
This will play out in the expected manner. James has filed a lawsuit against the Trump Treasury Department and the IRS for failing to respond to record requests. Trump believes all this stalling and counter suits and trips to the appeals courts will make these requests go away. His experience has been that they will end up being irrelevant.
And he’s right. Not because Letitia James and the House Democrats will give up or fail to win. But because in a classic pincer move, Representative Maxine Waters, who has requested Trump’s financial documents from Deutsche Bank, says she’s in the process of receiving them. In the end, Steve Mnuchin’s criminal obstruction spree will be an utter failure in absolutely everything, except in ruining Mnuchin’s life.
TR Kenneth is the author of the thriller, A ROOM FULL OF NIGHT. You can read all about her at trkenneth.com and on Twitter