CNN
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The House Ways and Means Committee now has six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns, ending a yearslong pursuit by Democrats to dig into one in every of the previous president’s most closely guarded personal details.
“Treasury has complied with last week’s court decision,” a Treasury spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.
The spokesperson didn’t provide any additional information. Federal courts had decided the House could request six years of Trump’s returns, after the committee had requested them in 2019 and again in 2021, based on public court records.
The handover had been on hold, until the Supreme Court declined last week to intervene. Several judges, including Republican appointees, have found the House had power to request the returns from the IRS.
Treasury declined to say whether the committee members have accessed the documents, based on a Treasury official.
The committee, led by Democratic Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, had sought six years of Trump’s tax records, primarily from the time he served as president. That included records about each Trump personally and a number of other of his corporate entities.
The panel is planning to satisfy Thursday to get briefed on the legal ramifications of the section of the tax law that Neal used to request Trump’s tax returns, based on a Neal aide.
Democrats will not be expected to review the tax returns at this session, and the documents will not be expected to be immediately released to the general public.
House general counsel Doug Letter plans to temporary the panel about section 6103 of the tax law on the meeting, which is a weekly session that Democrats on the committee have once they’re not on recess.
Neal refused to say to CNN if he had possession of the Trump tax documents, saying the law strictly prohibits him from discussing the state of the returns. Earlier Wednesday, the congressman also declined to say in the event that they would release any of the returns publicly.
“The subsequent step is to have a gathering of the Democratic caucus,” Neal said.
Trump’s legal team had constantly sought to maintain his returns secret, and turned to the Supreme Court – composed of three of his nominees – after he lost on the lower court level.
“No Congress has ever wielded its legislative powers to demand a President’s tax returns,” Trump argued to the Supreme Court, as he warned of the “far-reaching implications” implications of the DC Circuit’s ruling. He had argued that that the best way lower courts approached the House request ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s ruling within the Mazars case, concerning a subpoena that the House issued to Trump’s accounting firm for his tax information.
Trump’s taxes have been largely a mystery since he first ran for office.
During his 2016 campaign, the Trump broke with presidential election norms and refused to provide his tax returns for public review, they usually remained private after he took office.
Being under audit by the IRS doesn’t preclude someone from releasing their tax returns publicly. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from using it as a defense against releasing his financial information.
In 2016, Trump released a letter from his tax attorneys that confirmed he was under audit. However the letter also said the IRS finished reviewing Trump’s taxes from 2002 through 2008. Trump didn’t release his tax returns from those years, regardless that the audits were over.
An expansive Latest York Times report in 2020 found that Trump paid no federal income taxes in any respect in 10 out of 15 years starting in 2000 because he reported losing significantly greater than he made.
This story has been updated with additional information Wednesday.
