When the most powerful committee in the House of Representatives subpoenaed the IRS for Donald Trump’s taxes, we immediately raised an eyebrow… because we know who runs the Treasury Department and how much he respects the power of elected officials.
So color us not shocked to read this:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin failed to meet a final congressional deadline on Tuesday for turning over President Donald Trump’s tax returns to lawmakers, setting the stage for a possible court battle between Congress and the administration.
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Congress can’t tell Steve Mnuchin what to do! He obeys the laws of one man: Louise Linton Steve Mnuchin!
After the deadline lapsed, Mnuchin released a letter to [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard] Neal in which he pledged to make “a final decision” on whether to provide Trump’s tax records by May 6. It was the second time the administration had missed a House deadline for the tax returns since Neal requested them on April 3.
Mnuchin’s letter is less “Let me consult my lawyers” (since Neal is literally the only person in Congress legally empowered to demand the president’s tax returns) and more like “I’m going to take two weeks and see if I feel like it.”
This website’s fearless leader has already laid out the case for Mnuchin to be held in contempt of Congress and he’s probably on solid ground since he knows the law and we… don’t. But we do know Steve Mnuchin, so we’re going to state here with near certainty that he is entirely unconcerned with a constitutional crisis sh!tshow, and that he will almost certainly walk away unscathed.
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This is Steve Mnuchin we’re talking about here; a man that we’re increasingly certain is the scientific result of a human egg being fertilized by a junk bond in the early 1960s. Mnuchin’s entire life has been an object lesson in elite exceptionalism. He is a creature of a culture that does not view itself through any prism other than the one used by the privileged niche of the most privileged. Steve Mnuchin will protect Trump because he wants to, that’s why.
Refusing to turn over Trump’s tax returns is not a decisive action on Mnuchin’s part. It’s a reflex. The mere suggestion that he would have to comply with the orders of Richard Neal, a blue-collar politician from Western Massachusetts, is not even laughable to Mnuchin — it’s absurd. A subpoena from the Ways and Means Committee is a big deal to 99.9 percent of the people who have served in our government. To Steve Mnuchin, it’s an annoyance.
Mnuchin will not comply with Congress. Ever. And why would he? Congress couldn’t stop him from leveraging the mortgage crisis that he played a small role in creating, and Congress made him Treasury Secretary despite being utterly unfit and politically unviable for the job. Congress couldn’t even make Mnuchin stay for an entire hearing about whatever the f@ck he is doing over at Treasury. Steve Mnuchin fears nothing other than being inconvenienced or waylaid on the way to doing and getting whatever he wants. It’s in his very programming. We can type with total clarity that Steve Mnuchin is already thinking about how he could maybe use litigation finance to profit from being held in contempt of Congress.
And that’s not great news for the economy. While Steve Mnuchin can blithely ignore a reality in which the literal Secretary of the United States Treasury is being held in formal contempt of the United States Congress, it’s hard to fathom that the market will overlook it. Despite today’s surprisingly strong GDP report, the macro outlook is essentially a Rorschach test right now. Some people see signs that this economy is almost untouchable with recent tax cuts, low inflation and even some tariffs supercharging the market and ushering in a new era of American economic hegemony. Those people are choosing to ignore the fact that much of the data in today’s report are not cyclical at all. The big GDP number was boosted in no small part by some Kardashianesque government spending and a super-volatile factors like inventory pricing and trade. In fact, cyclical factors in the GDP report convey some real concerns as consumer and corporate spending are stagnant, and the housing sector is suddenly looking as shaky as it did before the last two recessions. And we won’t even go into the whole premise that the Uber IPO is textbook “end of cycle” insane behavior. But we will mention that the White House’s chief economic advisor is using this shockingly potent GDP figure to force the Federal Reserve into a rate cut.
No, you’re right, that doesn’t make sense if you think this whole boomlet is organic and not a function of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross playing fast and loose with a GDP report in order to curry favor with the childlike narcissist in the Oval Office who somehow hasn’t fired Wilbur yet.
Suffice it to say, we are part of the crowd that thinks this economy is on shaky ground, and that a constitutional crisis involving legal action being taken against the Treasury Secretary for hiding the president’s taxes will not help an already ill-equipped White House cope with a recession.
Steve Mnuchin has no concept of service. Steve Mnuchin cares only about Steve Mnuchin, which is a great psychological makeup for an investment banker turned hedge fund manager turned bank CEO turned Hollywood executive, but it’s a dangerously sh!tty mental state for the most powerful regulatory figure in the American economy if things start to fall apart and he’s languidly trying to protect the commander-in-chief from getting nailed on fraud charges.