The U.S. Supreme Court has finally done what political norms and plain old shame have, for years, been unable to do: get Donald Trump to release his income tax returns. With no apparent dissent, the court ruled that the former president must turn over records sought by New York City prosecutors investigating Trump's business practices. The ex-president handed them over on Thursday.

It shouldn't have taken a Supreme Court ruling. The sooner Congress passes a law mandating such disclosure from future presidents, the better.

The tradition of presidents releasing their income tax returns began with, of all people, Richard Nixon. His famous declaration of innocence in 1973 — "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook." — wasn't about the then-burgeoning Watergate scandal, but about accusations that he dodged his personal taxes. Nixon responded by releasing several years' worth of tax returns.

A political norm was born that every subsequent president — until Trump — adhered to in some fashion. It has become a widely accepted principle that one way presidents (and aspiring presidents) should demonstrate their honesty is by showing they've been honest in their personal tax practices. It has also become a guardrail against financial conflicts of interest in the White House.

Trump's refusal during the 2016 campaign to release his taxes provided an early demonstration of his willingness to transparently lie to the country, in this case about the reasons for the secrecy. He said he couldn't release them because they were under audit, repeatedly implying some legal disclosure prohibition that didn't actually exist. For a time, he nurtured the additional lie that he planned to eventually release them, though he stopped bothering to pretend once it became clear that his base didn't care. He never did release them voluntarily.

Though Trump has long been known to publicly exaggerate his net worth, he was still undoubtedly the wealthiest president in U.S. history and the first in generations who refused to meaningfully separate himself from his business interests while in office. His routine use of the presidency to enrich his businesses — in flagrant violation of the Constitution — was apparent throughout his tenure. His entire presidency was Exhibit A for the need to make full tax and financial disclosure a legal requirement for anyone who holds that office.

Because of the Supreme Court's refusal to quash a subpoena, New York prosecutors finally are getting a look at what Trump has so meticulously hidden. Trump's accountants had to turn over eight years of his returns and other records for the ongoing probe into possible tax, insurance and bank fraud by Trump's businesses. But because there was no disclosure required previously, Americans will learn only after the fact whether, to borrow the Nixonian phrase, their president was a crook.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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