₦airaland Forum

trump is dump

Weedsmoker:
Trump is scared of Americans knowing his actual networth.

Dude is a fake billionaire.

They will get it, he can't defeat the system since the 1770's

The Forgotten Law That Could Compel Mnuchin to Hand Over Trump’s Tax Returns


Congress has a secret weapon at its disposal, one that has been lurking in the U.S. code since 1789.

Another battle in the long war over President Donald Trump’s tax returns came to an inconclusive end last month. On April 8, Deputy Inspector General Richard K. Delmar reported that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin hadn’t violated department procedures when he refused to provide House lawmakers with Trump’s tax records. (House Democrats had tried to use a modern statute allowing Congress to compel the Treasury secretary to turn over any individual American’s tax records. Mnuchin had declined, deferring to the Office of Legal Counsel’s June 2019 opinion that the House didn’t have the authority to use the statute to investigate the president.)

The Trump administration might have won that skirmish, but the legal matter isn’t settled. Delmar didn’t report on the legality of Mnuchin’s decision—that issue is before a federal judge. Meanwhile, Congress’ separate attempts to use its inquiry power to subpoena Trump’s longtime accounting firm have been escalated to the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments in the case on Tuesday.


There is, however, another, potentially easier way to get Trump’s taxes. Congress has a secret weapon at its disposal, one that has been lurking in the U.S. code since 1789. If the House invokes this statute, it could have the president’s tax returns in hand in a matter of months, or spark a separation-of-powers standoff the president likely would not win in front of the now solidly originalist Supreme Court.

This unassuming statute, buried four paragraphs under the heading “Reports” in 31 U.S.C. § 331(d), requires the Treasury secretary to provide the House or Senate with any information they request. It reads: “The [Treasury] Secretary shall report to either House of Congress in person or in writing, as required, on matters referred to the Secretary by that House of Congress.” By law, therefore, the House could order Mnuchin to investigate and report (in person, no less) on the president’s taxes, and he would have to obey.

The statute has sweeping implications for our modern understanding of separation of powers law, and the authority of each chamber of Congress relative to the president. For one, the statute is constitutional. The Supreme Court has said that existing laws originally passed by Congress in 1789, the same year the Constitution went into effect, must be interpreted today as Congress interpreted them immediately after passage—that those laws are de facto constitutional unless specifically found otherwise. This statute, which has been used often throughout U.S. history, has always been followed by the executive branch and, accordingly, never been challenged in court.


The 1789 statute also refutes the Justice Department’s OLC memo. The memo, which contends Congress doesn’t have the authority to compel the executive branch to supply information, reasoned by analogy from a handful of modern Supreme Court decisions on separation of powers. But the “duty to report” provision predates those decisions by more than a century, calling into question not only the memo but also the assumptions underlying those Supreme Court opinions.

Why haven’t House Democrats used this provision already? The answer may lie in its long and complicated history. During Congress’ first session in 1789, when lawmakers were charged with creating the structure of the new executive branch, they passed a package of statutes to establish the first “great departments” of government: the Departments of State, War and Treasury. While the secretaries of War and State would be directly responsible to the president alone, the founding Congress determined that the Treasury secretary owed special duties to Congress, because the legislature has the “power of the purse.” Central among these was the obligation to report on a matter when Congress asked. Congress wrote that duty into the law known as the Treasury Act, and members of Congress used the rule repeatedly in the 1790s to order our first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, to make at least 20 detailed reports.

For the next 2½ centuries, Congress wielded this statute as a critical tool of legislative oversight. In 1946, Congress even contemplated expanding the Treasury secretary’s reporting duty to all members of the president’s Cabinet. But during the latter half of the 20th century, Congress stopped relying on it. By then, the Treasury Act had been rewritten and reworked to accommodate for the evolving executive branch, and the duty to report had moved around the U.S. code several times. Even so, the statute remained in every new publication of the U.S. code. (Drafters moved the statute a final time in 1982 to 31 U.S.C. § 331(d).)

Surprisingly, the House Judiciary Committee cited the Treasury Act’s reporting duty in a 2016 report on legislative oversight, in which it referred to the statute as a historical precedent. Congress—and the Office of Legal Counsel for that matter—seem to have forgotten that this section of the Treasury Act isn’t just precedent—it is still law.

Of course, none of this means that House Democrats are guaranteed to obtain Trump’s tax returns if they use this forgotten statute. Mnuchin may choose to violate the law and ignore the House’s request or produce a less-than-adequate “report” on Trump’s tax returns. And Trump’s Justice Department is unlikely to back down in the face of a new legal argument. The Justice Department is currently taking the far-fetched position that, even when armed with a valid statute, Congress can’t use the courts to enforce demands for information from the executive branch, leaving Congress essentially powerless against obstruction.

But if Mnuchin refuses to comply with 31 U.S.C. § 331(d), he will have a hard time finding legal ground to stand on. And if the case makes its way to the Supreme Court, where justices who call themselves “originalists” now hold sway, the court should rule in favor of Congress. Otherwise, the Supreme Court will be ignoring the will of the founders, the understanding of the Constitution shared by the first Congress and centuries of precedent.

Treasury secretaries since Hamilton have historically respected this statutory duty to report, even in highly partisan, scandal-laden situations. Yale law professor Jerry Mashaw called the Treasury secretary’s special duty to Congress a “double-edged sword,” for, “[a]s Alexander Hamilton learned to his dismay, the reporting requirement in the hands of political opponents could be a prodigious mechanism for harassment.” Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton details the herculean efforts Hamilton made to respond to this onslaught of reporting demands. Hamilton himself referred to his duties as “the malicious intrigues to stab me in the dark, against which I am too often obliged to guard myself, that distract and harass me.” But none of this diminished Hamilton’s duty to produce the reports, a point he affirmed in the opening of every submitted report, writing that he had created each “in obedience to the resolution of the House of Representatives.”

During the Bank Wars, President Andrew Jackson’s Treasury Secretary and future Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney complied with a Senate resolution requiring him to report his own personal financial interests in a controversial state bank. Taney recognized in his 1834 report to the Senate that despite clear political motives behind the Senate resolution, he was duty-bound by the Treasury Act to assist the legislature in its executive branch oversight. Mnuchin is no less required to provide the House with a report on Trump’s tax returns if the House asks. For the secretary to disregard his duty would represent an unprecedented violation of a core purpose of the Treasury Act, fundamental to separation of powers law.

The House can follow in the footsteps of the first Congress and pass a simple resolution under Section 331(d), ordering Mnuchin to provide it with a report on Trump’s tax returns. Congress has the undeniable constitutional power to do so. As Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton might say, the House should not throw away its shot.

This really happened

Correct

Obamagate was a Russian troll scam

Sheunma:
Alleluya

Amen

Do you remember the three monkeys, one who covers his eyes, the second who covers his ears and the third his mouth
The idea of see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil is the ultimate plan of those in charge of the world governments.

Now we already know of the big brother, all seeing eye, which is quite close to us symbolically with big brother africa
It was more of a programming for you to be subservient to government intrusion to your privacy, because actually your privacy doesnt exist
So now they have you as monkey to close your eyes, that is see no evil..as we have become so desensitized to violence, deaths, evil etc

Now we all wear mask to close our mouths, which will continue for the foreseeable future. It will breed a culture of silence and people will more
inverse to speaking truth to power which means more subservient to the government overlords.

If you are not seeing this yet, you are still blind. Respects to the dead.

Is it not time to note that trump is a raging psychotic hypocrite and he is degenerating fast?
His madness has already killed over hundreds of thousands of people. these raving lunatic supporters are really out for blood

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/11/senate-republicans-trump-obamagate-249734

Senate Republicans break with Trump over ‘Obamagate’

Trump accused the former president of committing the “biggest political crime in American history.”

President Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign to encourage sweeping investigations of his predecessor Barack Obama met a unanimous response from Senate Republicans: No thanks.

Trump’s Senate allies on Monday stopped short of echoing Trump’s frenetic and unsubstantiated claim that Obama acted illegally when the Justice Department began probing incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn in late 2016. And they indicated that the Senate would pass on investigating the former president as they conduct their own investigations that could soon ensnare other senior Obama administration officials.

“I’m not anticipating calling President Obama,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), whose panel is investigating the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation, even as he vowed to bring in former senior Obama administration officials as witnesses. Those ex-officials include former FBI Director James Comey and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.


“I think the president’s got a real good reason to be upset with the Obama people,” Graham said.

Senate Republicans, however, sidestepped questions of whether the Justice Department should pursue criminal investigations against the former Obama officials, instead deferring to the ongoing investigation of U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was tapped by Attorney General Williams Barr to probe the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.

“That’s already being looked at, and we’ve got relevant committees up here that are talking a look at some of those issues too. I always think that at the end, eventually the truth comes out, and I’m sure it will here too,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who similarly declined to endorse an effort to go after the former president.

Trump and his allies have pinned their hopes on Durham to unveil charges of misconduct against former officials at the highest levels of the Obama administration who spearheaded the Russia probe, though there’s no indication Durham has uncovered any evidence of criminal activity by senior Obama aides.

Senate Republicans largely demurred on Trump’s public effort to lean on investigators to target his longtime adversaries, but they said they understood why he was frustrated.

“He was accused of being a stooge for [Vladimir] Putin and then subject to the appointment of a special counsel,” added Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee. “I understand why the president feels like he’s under assault. But I think we need to do our own independent investigation. Obviously, Mr. Durham is doing his. We’ll hear from them. But I think we have an important role to play in terms of congressional oversight.”

After the Justice Department’s abrupt decision last week to drop the criminal case against Flynn, Trump shifted his public focus over the weekend to mount a three-day tear against his predecessor on Twitter, accusing Obama of committing the “biggest political crime in American history.” Trump sought to popularize the hashtag “Obamagate,” which he said makes the Watergate scandal “look small time.” Trump also said Obama “got caught” and later retweeted comments by Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, who said Obama was part of an effort to frame and entrap her client.

The president also retweeted a photo of himself with the caption: “Hope you had fun investigating me. Now it’s my turn.” And he retweeted a supporter’s call for former top FBI and Justice Department officials to be imprisoned.

When asked Monday what crime Obama allegedly committed, Trump replied: “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody, all you have to do is read the newspapers.”

Barr last week dropped the charges against Flynn, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI during an interview about several phone calls he had with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. shortly before Trump took office. Flynn later sought to rescind the plea and allege misconduct against him.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/11/senate-republicans-trump-obamagate-249734

orisa37:
I DON'T SUPPORT KERRY VISITING SOKOTO INSTEAD OF ABUJA. IT WAS A WRECKLESS POLITICS AND A SLAP ON THE YORUBAS AND IGBOS. YORUBAS AND THE IGBOS ARE DISTINCT AND DIFFERENT FROM MIYETTI ALLAH FULANI HERDSMEN.

There's something wrong with you but you won't admit it. Take a step back, these fools are programming you, both democrats, republicans trump and Hollywood. I'm not you snowflake, I've been blessed with some hindsight for a long time now and most things I predicted to friends are just happening. Stop being a jackazz

wickedtuna:
This post wont age well

I'm just scared of what is about to happen, trump is really doing damage

wickedtuna:
Sentiments asides, Trump is smarter than Obama. And Obama is going to jail.

What a silly projection because trumps prospects of jail time is all the more likely after he loses in November. I predict the state of new York will seize all trump has and render him useless

kurupt1:
That you can speak eloquently doesn't mean your smarter than an incoherent person
You can't become a billionaire if your not smart and by the way Trump is street smarter than Obama by a mile .Obama is just an academic

Street smarter has killed over 70k people due to his gross incompetence

And also this...

trump is far too jealous of far less trivial things

Who's more beholding to China than trump? Get that wool outta your head

true

udemzyudex:
You're a big joke.

trump is a bigger and more deadlier joke

ZooOga:
I have to admit, I looked at unclad pics of Melania Trump on the internet a few yrs ago. Just imagine if a 9ja president tried parking a former alleged olosho in Aso Rock.

the first people to shout at their lungs are the trumpo fanatics, their hypochrisy stinks

udemzyudex:
But the hastag #ObamaGate is trending.

As clintons email fizzle out, and Bidens ukraine conspiracy
you all are falling into a ditch with trump, jim jones style, why you dont know it yet is beyond me?

and do you know when the hashtag started trending? midnight in the u.s which was noon time in moscow.
now some idiots have been triggered by russian gru service. They did tell you they are in active service again

orisa37:
Trump is smarter.
Trump is older and more experienced.
Trump is Richer and more content.
Trump is more determined and discerning.
Trump is a Republican Democrats.
Trump will get Nobel in 2024

trump smarter? who cant even keep four words straight in a sentence? dont be dumb covfefe

They are looking at him with one eye. They will soon dispose of him, I just pity the state of ikwerre people after this

CrazyOptimist:
Obama's wife is smarter.

You can feel the love

I'll pay you $500 if you have a pic of trump doing something like this

tweets say a thousand words...

TANTUMERGO007:
Lmao, but the same obama sent people to spy on Trump's campaign. Hahahaha

This one i know of not some conspiracy b.s

IJOBA2:
BIDEN IS A RAPIST
CC. IMAM LUCASBALO AKA ABBEBAILEY

Just in case your brain skipped this

TANTUMERGO007:
CNN go wait tire



He just did a press conference, he's negative

Bucket head