Are we the only newspaper that is shocked at the disclosure of the tax returns that the courts forced President Trump to place in the custody of Congress? A whole handcart full of his most intimate financial filings was wheeled into the Committee on Ways and Means to be released to the public. On what basis? The former president hasn’t been charged with any tax crimes, let alone convicted. On what basis are these filings being made public? 

On the contrary, the requirement in respect of tax returns is that they be kept confidential. Privacy and Confidentiality are Articles Seven and Eight of what the Internal Revenue Service calls the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. “Taxpayers,” says the Internal Revenue Service on its own website, “have the right to expect that any information they provide to the IRS will not be disclosed unless authorized by the taxpayer or by law.”

Even the federal district judge who agreed to the Democrats’ request to see the Trump returns conceded the dispute was “uncharted territory,” though noting federal law allows Ways and Means to put the tax returns in the Congressional Record, in effect making them public. Yet the committee’s chairman, Richard Neal of Massachusetts, would have his long-suffering constituents believe that he’s relying on the — wait for it — Magna Carta Libertatum. 

“Since the Magna Carta,” Mr. Neal said after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the tax returns to go to Congress, “the principle of oversight has been upheld, and today is no different.” At that claim King John and the Rebel Barons would have fallen out of their mail. The word “oversight” appears nowhere in their charter, which says nothing about tax returns. On the contrary, what Magna Carta avers is that “the law of the land” applies to all.

In short, what it made clear is that no one — even the King — is above the law. No wonder F.D.R. observed that “the democratic aspiration” was “written in Magna Carta.” It inspired the Framers to forge a government of separated powers to preserve the freedoms first outlined in Magna Carta. That was designed to prevent power from being concentrated in one branch, as John Adams wrote, “to the end it may be a government of laws, and not of men.”

Key to Adams’ reasoning was that “the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them.” Mr. Neal and his fellow Democrats — like the solons of the January 6 Committee — appear to have lost sight of this hallmark of Constitutional government in their zeal to pursue Mr. Trump. As Chief Justice Roberts has said, Congress’ demands for presidential records raise “special concerns regarding the separation of powers.”

Because “Congress has no enumerated constitutional power to conduct investigations or issue subpoenas,” the Chief Justice said, its demands must have “a valid legislative purpose.” Mr. Neal would have us believe that Mr. Trump’s taxes were needed for “an investigation into IRS audit practices of presidents and vice presidents,” as ABC News put it. “This was never about being punitive,” Mr. Neal tries to assert with a straight face. 

The French have an expression for this kind of self-incrimination: “Qui s’excuse s’accuse.” Yet Mr. Neal avers that “This rises above politics,” and, with the 117th Congress in its final hours, says, again with a straight face, that “the Committee will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.” The emptiness of that vow is underscored by releasing Mr. Trump’s returns to public view.

The ranking Ways and Means Republican, Kevin Brady, calls the Democrats’ démarche a “a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond President Trump.” What’s to stop lawmakers, he asks, from releasing “the tax returns of private citizens, political enemies, business and labor leaders, or even the Supreme Court justices themselves?” Abuses of authority like this remind us why King John’s powers were crimped by the Barons back in 1215.