Democrat-Led House Committee Votes To Release Trump’s Tax Returns

Democrat-Led House Committee Votes To Release Trump’s Tax Returns

Congressional Democrats in the House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to publicly release former President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

The Democratic-controlled committee voted 24-16 to release the materials at an unspecified time, live footage showed. All Republicans on the committee voted against the action.

Chairman Richard Neal requested that the committee release the former president’s returns from between 2015 to 2020, CNN reported. Democratic Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee, a member of the committee, said the vote approved for the Joint Committee on Taxation to release an articulate analysis of the report.

The reports will undergo a heavy redaction process and likely be prepared Tuesday, the outlet reported. Democrats are required to rely on section 6103 of the tax code to legally release the returns.

The committee has participated in a years-long effort to review six years worth of tax returns and files connected with the former president and eight of his businesses. Congressional Democrats on the House Oversight Committee first subpoenaed the documents in 2019 after his former attorney Michael Cohen testified that he misrepresented his net worth in connection to his accounting firm, Mazars USA.

In April 2019, Neal requested the returns, audit information and administrative files from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for tax years 2013 – 2018. The committee intends to review the returns to investigate whether Trump violated the Constitution’s emoluments clauses by accepting payments from foreign governments while in office, NBC News reported. A three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals approved of the committee’s request to retrieve the returns from the IRS. The ruling led Trump to file an emergency application to the court in late October to temporarily block the committee from reviewing his returns.

The Supreme Court denied Trump’s request in a Nov. 22 ruling, paving the way for the committee to review the tax returns. The Treasury Department handed over the tax returns to the committee Nov. 30 in compliance with court orders.

Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle tweeted Tuesday that he “proudly” voted in favor of releasing the returns because the former president is not “above the law.” Republicans of the House Judiciary Committee opposed the release of the returns in a Tuesday night tweet.

“Democrats obsess over President Trump’s tax returns, but have no problem with the Pelosi family’s stock trades,” they tweeted.