The California state government has now taken a major step towards directly confronting President Donald Trump’s corrupt belligerence. This Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that demands that presidential candidates — and those running for the state’s own governor’s office — release their tax returns before they’re allowed to appear on ballots for the state’s primary elections. Considering Trump has infamously fought against efforts to uncover his financial history, which could be packed full of illegality, corruption, and more, this bill should be considered a direct affront to his mayhem.
Newsom had spent days without publicly revealing which way he’d go on the bill after it passed the state legislature. His predecessor Jerry Brown had vetoed a similar measure, arguing it would set the state up for arduous legal challenges. Insisting that California is “well within its constitutional right to include this requirement” ahead of primary elections, Newsom insists:
‘These are extraordinary times and states have a legal and moral duty to do everything in their power to ensure leaders seeking the highest offices meet minimal standards, and to restore public confidence. The disclosure required by this bill will shed light on conflicts of interest, self-dealing, or influence from domestic and foreign business interest.’
Furthering his argument that the legislation is totally appropriate, Newsom also noted in his public statement on the occasion that in late 2018, “the Brennan Center’s National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy, a bipartisan group of former public servants and policy experts, recommended that Congress standardize and codify the longstanding practice of tax return disclosure.” The first-term California chief executive insisted that the law should be a national standard.
It’s unlikely to have a major impact as is on Trump’s re-election chances for two reasons. To begin with, Trump has no major primary election challengers. Although former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld has declared a candidacy, he has not achieved anywhere close to levels of support high enough to actually topple Trump. Additionally, in a general election context — although this doesn’t even seem to apply there — Trump was never likely to get the electoral votes from the Democratic stronghold of California anyway.
Trump is currently engaged in a legal battle to counter other attempts to get his tax returns. He’s sued Democrats in New York and D.C. over a law New York enacted that would let Congressional Democrats get his state tax returns in the absence of success on the federal level. The House Ways and Means Committee as led by Democratic Chairman Richard Neal filed a legally allowed request for Trump’s federal returns, and in the absence of a hint of compliance from the Treasury Department, they’ve since filed a lawsuit demanding the documents.
The information could contain details about Trump’s entanglement with foreign financial interests, his possible skipping out of tax obligations, and other issues. Some have even suggested that Trump has been involved with money laundering. He has consistently refused to acknowledge any legitimacy to the requests from Congress and others at oversight.
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