A Democrat-controlled committee was meeting on Tuesday to vote on whether to publicly release years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, which the former US president has long tried to shield.
A Democrat-controlled committee was meeting on Tuesday to vote on whether to publicly release years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, which the former US president has long tried to shield.
The House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal has kept a close hold on the actions of the panel, which planned to vote on the release in a closed session. And if members move forward with plans to release the returns, it is unclear how quickly that would happen.
But after a years-long battle that ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court clearing the way last month for the Treasury Department to send the returns to Congress, Democrats are under pressure to act aggressively.
The committee received six years of tax returns for Mr Trump and some of his businesses. And with just two weeks left until Republicans formally take control of the House, Tuesday’s meeting could be the last opportunity for Democrats to disclose whatever information they have gleaned.
Republicans have railed against the potential release, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent.
Before Tuesday’s meeting, Rep Kevin Brady of Texas, the committee’s top Republican, called any release of Trump’s tax records a “dangerous new political weapon” that “even Democrats will come to regret”.
“Our concern is not whether the president should have made his tax returns public, as is traditional, nor about the accuracy of his tax returns,” Mr Brady said. “Our concern is that, if taken, this committee action will set a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president and overturns decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since the Watergate reforms.”
Mr Trump has long had a complicated relationship with his personal income taxes.
As a presidential candidate in 2016, he broke decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax forms to the public. He bragged during a presidential debate that year that he was “smart” because he paid no federal taxes and later claimed he would not personally benefit from the 2017 tax cuts he signed into law that favoured people with extreme wealth, asking Americans to simply take him at his word.
