Lawyers for former President Donald Trump moved to block House Democratic efforts to obtain his tax returns, blasting the push as a political attempt to harm him following the Justice Department greenlighting the effort.
Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts had requested six years of Trump’s tax returns and those of eight Trump-associated businesses, including his Bedminster golf club, from the IRS in April 2019.
Then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected the effort in May 2019 and was backed up by the Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel that year. But the Biden DOJ concluded in July that “Treasury must furnish the information to the Committee,” which the Treasury Department agreed to do, though it allowed Trump a chance to respond in court first.
“After President Trump’s election, Democrats in Congress and across the country only became more eager to disclose the President’s tax returns for political gain. During the 115th Congress, when they were still the minority party, House Democrats gave a variety of reasons for wanting the President’s tax returns. Their statements all had a common theme: the tax returns would contain damaging information about President Trump that the House Democrats would release to the public,” Trump lawyer Patrick Strawbridge of Consovoy McCarthy told a federal court on Wednesday.
via joemiller