42
N.Y. Times, Feb. 23, 1981, at A1; Associated Press,
President’s Trust Grows in Value, N.Y. Times, May 15, 1992,
at A17; Stephen Labaton, Most of Clintons’ Wealth Held by
Mrs. Clinton, Disclosure Form Shows, N.Y. Times, May 18,
1994, at A20; Richard W. Stevenson, Bushes’ Assets Put at
$8.8 Million in Filing, N.Y. Times, May 16, 2003, at A22; U.S.
Office of Government Ethics, Presidential and Vice
Presidential Financial Disclosure Reports,
https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/President%20and%
20Vice%20President%20Index (financial disclosure reports of
Presidents Obama and Trump); see also Appellants’ Br. 44
(acknowledging that “President [Trump] has voluntarily
complied with those statutory requirements”). In fact,
Presidents Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, and
Obama exceeded statutory disclosure requirements by
releasing their personal federal income tax returns to the public.
See Presidential Tax Returns, TaxNotes,
taxnotes.com/presidential-tax-returns (collecting presidential
tax records).
Of course, as the Trump Plaintiffs point out, “compliance
is not the measure of constitutionality.” Appellants’ Br. 44. But
when asked to decide whether an act of Congress “disrupts the
proper balance between the coordinate branches,” Nixon II, 433
U.S. at 443, a court would be foolish to ignore those branches’
prior pattern of conflict—or, as here, cooperation. See id. at 441
(finding it significant that “[n]either President Ford nor
President Carter support[ed] [former-President Nixon’s]
claim” that the challenged statute’s “regulation of the
disposition of Presidential materials . . . constitutes, without
more, a violation of the principle of separation of powers”); cf.
Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 135 S. Ct. 2076, 2091 (2015) (“In
separation-of-powers cases this Court has often ‘put significant
weight upon historical practice.’” (quoting NLRB v. Noel
Canning, 573 U.S. 513, 524 (2014))). Though not dispositive,