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Mueller could obtain Trump's tax-returns without his permission or even notifying him.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/31/could-the-russia-investigation-reveal-trumps-tax-returns-215212But in interviews, veteran federal prosecutors and legal scholars said that Mueller, who began his investigation only last week, has clear-cut authority to obtain the president’s tax returns—perhaps the most sensitive and sought-after government documents since the Pentagon Papers—from the IRS if Mueller suspects they might contain evidence of a crime.
And short of firing Mueller and shutting down his investigation, Trump—who is the first president in 40 years to refuse to make his tax returns public, despite once promising to do so— would have almost no way of stopping him. In fact, the prosecutors said, the president and his lawyers would not necessarily even know that Mueller had obtained them.
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Notably, this does not necessarily mean that the public would ever see the returns. If Mueller obtained them, prosecutors said, there would be no obvious way for him to release them unless he needed them as evidence at trial against Trump associates or, possibly, if Congress sought them for an impeachment trial of the president. But the transfer of the documents from the IRS would still be significant historically and otherwise—and could strike fear in the White House.
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A broadly worded provision of the Internal Revenue Code gives Mueller, who acts with the authority of the Justice Department in his new post, the ability to obtain the returns from the IRS if he can demonstrate to a federal judge that there is “reasonable cause to believe, based upon information believed to be reliable, that a specific criminal act has been committed” and that the returns “may be relevant” to the investigation. Under the law, there is no requirement that the subject of the investigation—in this case, Trump—even be notified of the court order to IRS. The move does not require a formal subpoena or the action of a grand jury; veteran federal prosecutors said it could all take place in a matter of hours.
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Under the 1999 Justice Department regulations used to name Mueller, Rosenstein is, nominally, Mueller’s supervisor, which means Rosenstein could try to overturn any significant decision made by Mueller, including a decision to seek the tax returns. The regulations bar Rosenstein from “day-to-day supervision” of the special prosecutor’s investigation, though he can intervene if Mueller takes an action that is “so inappropriate or unwarranted” that it should be blocked. The language is subjective, however, and it has never been tested in detail in court. It’s unclear whether Mueller would be compelled to notify Rosenstein in advance that he was seeking Trump’s tax returns. It’s also unclear what grounds Rosenstein could use to suggest that it was improper for Mueller to obtain them.
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In totally unrelated news, Mueller has added a senior investigator form the DoJ's financial fraud-unit to his team.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-31/senior-justice-official-said-to-jump-to-russia-probe-team
15 replies
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Before we lose everything!!
