If you thought you were ever going to get away from the word “emoluments,” you’re sadly mistaken — but that’s a good thing. There have been multiple ongoing lawsuits over Donald Trump’s violations of the archaic, complex rules regarding accepting payments or gifts from foreign governments or dignitaries. In each case, attorneys for the President have attempted to have the suits thrown out, and in each case, a federal judge has ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, allowing the lawsuits to proceed.
Now Trump facing some of the toughest opponents he’ll ever come up against in his life in the form of state Attorneys General who have jointly filed an emoluments suit against him, led by the AG of Maryland, Brian Frosh, and they are going straight for the jugular this time.
There is no way to try a case that requires disclosure of what payments or gifts the President might have gotten due to his influence or political office without looking at his tax returns, and that’s exactly where the two Attorneys General of Maryland and the District of Columbia went first upon being told their suit could proceed: They’ve now subpoenaed Donald Trump’s tax returns.
That’s right — the tax returns that Trump promised during his campaign for the presidency that he was going to release will finally be produced due to a court order, much to the President’s chagrin. All of the reasons he may have had for wanting to keep those tax returns to himself will now be revealed, including any money that, while unrelated to the emoluments cases, may prove some kind of untoward collaboration with the government of Russia — be it loans, monies exchanged for services, or even perhaps down payments on real estate that he has now testified in writing that he stopped pursuing before continuing into his presidential campaign.
This could spell disaster for Donald, and it comes from the unlikeliest, maybe even quirkiest, facet of all challenges he’s faced so far in his troubled two-year tenure.
Read the subpoena here:
Featured image via screen capture
