The powerful House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday evening voted to release Donald Trump’s tax returns, which it has fought to obtain for nearly four years. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that six years of the ex-president’s tax returns had to be provided to the Committee.
The New York Times reports “it could take some time before anything is available to the public.”
The vote, which took place behind closed doors after over three hours of deliberations was 24-16. All Democrats voted in favor of releasing the disgraced, twice impeached ex-president’s taxes, and all Republicans voted to shield them from public view.
Minutes before the Committee’s Chairman, Richard Neal (D-MA) gaveled into session Tuesday afternoon, ABC News congressional investigative reporter Katherine Faulders posted video of Trump’s tax returns being wheeled into the chamber.
Chairman Neal told reporters Tuesday evening there were no audits performed on Trump’s taxes for 2017, 2018, and 2019, despite Trump’s claims and despite IRS policy of auditing each sitting president’s returns.
“The agency launched an audit only after Neal requested Trump’s taxes in 2019 in the name of assessing that auditing program, they said — and it has yet to complete it,” The New York Times’ Charlie Savage adds.
Trump is the first U.S. president to refuse to release his taxes in nearly five decades. When Trump ran in 2016, Hillary Clinton made available to the public 38 years of tax returns.
Adding some history, CNN notes that the “same statute has been used a number of times by Ways and Means chairmen for investigations and the Joint Committee on Taxation also used the statute to obtain information about former President Richard Nixon’s taxes in the 1970s. According to the House Ways and Means Committee, that information was requested and received without a legal fight.”
This is a breaking news and developing story.