Trump’s tax returns can be released to Congress: DOJ

Bloomberg

The Justice Department directed the Treasury Department to hand over former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to Congress, a move that means six years of Trump’s personal and business financial information could become public.
“We conclude that the Secretary must comply with the Ways and Means Committee’s June 16, 2021 request” for the tax returns and related tax information, the department’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a 39-page opinion posted on its website.
The decision reverses a 2019 opinion that the Treasury Department shouldn’t release the returns, which the department now says “rested upon the assertion that the Committee was disingenuous about its true objective in seeking President Trump’s tax information.”
The move marks the latest and perhaps one of the final salvos in the years-long political standoff between Trump and Democratic leaders in Washington and New York over access to the former president’s tax returns. Reporting by the New York Times in 2020 suggested Trump paid no federal income taxes for years.
The opinion says the Ways and Means Committee, which is controlled by Democrats, can choose to publish a report about Trump’s income and tax information based on the IRS returns, effectively making his tax returns public.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Friday that access to Trump’s tax returns “is a matter of national security.”
“The American people deserve to know the facts of his troubling conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president,” she said.
But Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means panel, said the Justice Department opinion “sets a dangerous precedent that weaponises the tax code by giving Congress
the dangerous power to rummage through anyone’s private tax returns for purely political reasons.”
In a June 16 request to the Treasury Department renewing his request for Trump’s tax returns, Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal suggested that Trump may have tampered with the IRS’s legally mandated review of his tax information by directly contacting the agent involved in it. Neal said the committee’s review of Trump’s tax returns would largely focus on whether the IRS properly audited them.
“Over the last two years, the IRS has been unable to provide the Committee assurance that sufficient safeguards exist to shield a revenue agent from undue influence at the hands of a President trying to secure a favorable audit,” Neal wrote.
“Perhaps the most troubling fact is that, while the revenue agent’s identity is largely secret within the IRS, it is known by the President and the President’s representatives, who communicate directly with the agent without
supervision.”
Added the Massachusetts Democrat: “This raises critical questions as to whether this employee is adequately protected and able to act objectively and impartially.”
Neal argued that the review is necessary for his committee to determine whether it will pursue a new law to change the mandatory audit program for presidents, put in place after former President Richard Nixon didn’t fully pay his taxes, and to determine if Trump may have fallen under foreign influence due to business dealings.
The request covers Trump’s income and the income of several of his closely held businesses, including his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club.