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House Democrats voted on Tuesday to publicly release materials related to former President Donald Trump’s personal tax returns, a stunning loss for the embattled former president after years of fighting to protect his finances from public scrutiny.
The committee voted 24-16, along party lines, to submit the tax filings to the US House.
Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan told reporters on Capitol Hill that the panel would be releasing two reports covering the IRS audit program of presidential tax returns, legislative recommendations to strengthen tax transparency, and the six years of Trump’s tax filings — after all personal identifying information has been redacted.
Kildee anticipated the redactions would take hours but not spill into several days. However, Chairman Rep. Richard Neal said redactions could take days.
The outcome caps a protracted legal battle that involved heated exchanges on Capitol Hill, ping-ponging throughout the court system — culminating in a US Supreme Court stacked with three Trump appointees denying his last-ditch appeal for political cover — and lots of “see-they’re-out-to-get-me” messaging from the uncooperative Trump White House.
The committee opened its hearing publicly for a few minutes before proceeding with a closed-door meeting that took more than four hours. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal said after the vote on Tuesday evening that the redacted information would include social security numbers, street addresses, personal identification numbers, and banking information.
“Did we have enough time to conduct the review? Yes we did,” Neal told reporters after the meeting, praising Ways and Means staff for combing through the trove of documents in under a month.
He also revealed that the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation — a scorekeeping agency — also assisted with the review, and said its findings would be reflected in one of the two forthcoming reports.
