The years-long battle into Donald Trump’s tax records could be concluded as soon as this Friday.
A spokesperson for the Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee told multiple news outlets that the disclosure will take place Friday, less than a week before Republicans take control of the lower chamber.
According to The Daily Wire, The panel voted along party lines last week to release Trump’s tax returns following a years-long legal battle capped by the Supreme Court rejecting the former president’s plea to block the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from giving the tax records to the committee.
Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) said the release would happen after a few days, allowing staff to make redactions of sensitive information.
With Trump engaged in a third bid for the White House, his campaign condemned Democrats over the vote to release his tax returns.
“This unprecedented leak by lame-duck Democrats is proof they are playing a political game they are losing,” said Trump’s campaign, according to The Washington Post. “If this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans without cause.”
While Democrats have argued that they needed access to Trump’s tax returns for the sake of oversight, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, echoed concerns raised by Trump’s team, saying the disclosure 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.”
The House Ways and Means Committee has already summarized its findings, issuing a report last week that said the IRS failed to adhere to its own policy and audit Trump during his first two years in office, only started one on Trump’s 2016 income tax return the same day in 2019 the panel requested access and failed to complete it by the time Trump left office in January 2021. A supplemental report prepared by Joint Committee on Taxation was also released last week, showing how much Trump paid or did not pay in taxes each year, per CNBC. That review found Trump paid no federal income taxes during his final year as president.
Now let’s have Biden’s.