Following a multi-year court battle that concluded in a Supreme Court setback, a Dem. led House panel obtained former President Donald Trump’s taxes on Wednesday.
Since 2019, the House Ways and Means Committee has been going after Trump’s taxes, ostensibly to see if the statute on auditing presidential returns should be changed. Although the committee has the legal authority to collect any individual’s tax returns, the Treasury Dept. under Trump declined, claiming that there wasn’t any valid cause to do so.
“The Treasury has complied with the court’s order from last week,” a Treasury spokesperson stated to the Press on Wednesday. It’s unclear if any members of Congress have already accessed them.
Democrats now have through early January, when Republicans will take over the House and presumably end the investigation. Despite the impending deadline, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), head of the House Ways and Means Committee, welcomed the decision this past week as a triumph for oversight, implying that Dems. will dive into the returns as soon as possible.
“We realized the strength of our case, so we stuck with it, followed counsel’s instructions, and finally, our case was validated by the highest court in the land,” Neal said. “The idea of oversight has been sustained since the Magna Carta, and today is no different. This transcends politics, and the Committee will now carry out the oversight that we have sought for the past three and a half years.”
Trump, who announced his intention to run for president again earlier this month, has not commented publicly on the Treasury Dept’s plan to submit his tax returns to Congress. Trump accused the Supreme Court of “always” deciding against him in a post on the social networking platform Truth Social last week.
“The Supreme Court has lost its respect, reputation, and stature, and has devolved into nothing more than a political body, with our country bearing the brunt of the consequences,” Trump added. “They should be ashamed!”
Earlier, Chief Justice John Roberts barred the committee from getting Trump’s tax returns while the Supreme Court weighed Trump’s appeal. The court later agreed to “vacate” the request, allowing Congress to obtain the taxes officially.
