Trump has made clear to associates that he has no plans to allow Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to turn over his personal tax records, according to three people who have been briefed on the discussions and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

As my colleague Abigail Tracy reported in December, it’s more than likely that Mnuchin started “making preparations” to block Dems’ requests shortly after they won the House. One thing Trump has going for him is the former financier’s commitment to serving as an extremely loyal stooge (though not necessarily in the same way as Trump Organization executive Matthew Calamari, who once allegedly said he’d kill for the boss). In addition to ramming a deficit-busting tax bill down Americans’ throats, and spinning an elaborate trickle-down fantasy about how the thing is totally going to pay for itself, Mnuchin has defended the president on everything from praising neo-Nazis to calling football players exercising their First Amendment rights “sons of bitches.” In January, he told lawmakers to just “trust” Trump when it came to Russia and, crucially, he’s stonewalled any and all attempts by Democrats to get clarity when it comes to the Trump family’s financial entanglements.

One thing Trump doesn’t have going for him? The law:

The 1924 law does not appear to give Mnuchin much flexibility to deny a congressional request—it says he “shall” turn over the records . . . George Yin, former chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, said there is no precedent for a treasury secretary to refuse to comply with a congressional request for tax returns.

Should Mnuchin refuse—and given his devotion to Trump, there’s a good chance he might!—Democrats would likely attempt to force his hand by filing a lawsuit in federal court, which could drag the process out over a period of months, or 928,134 “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” tweets. The lag time could work in Trump’s favor, especially if the G.O.P. manages to wrest back control of Congress in 2020, but also because if the legal battle reaches the Supreme Court, a number of friendly faces up there would presumably be happy to give him cover, particularly the face that lights up when it sees an ice-cold keg of Coors Light the way others light up on Christmas morning. As Newt Gingrich said in October, that’s when “we’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it.”