Never Rat On Your Friends And Always Keep Your Mouth Shut

Of course, Mnuchin has very good reasons to think he’s not even going to get pinched for it:

The Treasury Department said on Monday that it would not release President Trump’s tax returns to Congress, defying a request from House Democrats and setting up a legal battle likely to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, wrote in a letter to Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, that Mr. Neal’s request for the tax returns “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose” and that he was not authorized to disclose them. The decision came after weeks of delays as Mr. Mnuchin said that his department and the Justice Department needed to study the provision of the tax code that Democrats were using to seek six years’ worth of the president’s personal and business tax returns.

As to the question of whether the Supreme Court will actually check Trump here, well, the first major test (Korematsu II) was not promising and the second (the illegal addition of a citizenship question to the census) seems headed in the same direction. I do agree with Paul that the strongest case for impeaching Trump — with no illusions that he can actually be removed — would be based on the refusal to comply with congressional investigations. An impeachment that follows Trump’s Supreme Court capos upholding the family’s omerta in particular could be of real political value, given the much lower priority Democratic voters have generally placed on control of the federal judiciary.