Congress to get Trump taxes
Justice Department says returns request valid
WASHINGTON — Former president Donald Trump’s tax returns should be turned over to House Democrats who tried unsuccessfully for years to get the documents, the Justice Department said Friday, in a legal analysis reversing a position taken two years ago.
“The statute at issue here is unambiguous,” the opinion from acting Assistant Attorney General Dawn Johnsen states. “‘Upon written request’ of the chairman of one of the three congressional tax committees, the Secretary ‘shall furnish’ the requested tax information to the Committee.”
The decision marks another significant legal setback for Mr. Trump, who has fought a multifaceted campaign to keep his tax records secret from prosecutors, lawmakers and the public. Mr. Trump was the first president in decades to refuse to share his tax returns as a candidate or while in office.
Earlier this year, Mr. Trump’s tax records were turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney, after a separate legal fight in which the Supreme Court declined to intervene. The prosecutor’s office has been examining Mr. Trump’s finances as part of a criminal probe of his businesses and has indicted Mr. Trump’s longtime financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, on tax charges. Mr. Weisselberg has denied the charges.
In April 2019, Rep. Richard Neal,
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, requested the Treasury Department provide six years of Mr. Trump’s returns because it was considering bills and oversight in connection with federal tax law, but the then Trump- controlled Justice Department opined against it.
Mr. Trump successfully beat back efforts to see his tax returns, including a battle in federal court. But the new opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said the committee’s request to see the records — as part of its oversight of the Internal Revenue Service’s presidential audit program — is valid and should be fulfilled.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the former president would fight the release through a previously filed lawsuit over the committee’s demand for his tax returns. A spokesperson for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, RButler, a top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, called the ruling an “astonishing abuse of power.” Mr. Kelly has repeatedly criticized the IRS for leaking tax records, including Mr. Trump’s and those of wealthy Americans, to news outlets.
“Let’s get this straight,” Mr. Kelly wrote on Twitter. “Biden’s DOJ orders his IRS to give a former president and political opponent’s tax returns to House Democrats, who could leak them to the public and use them as a political weapon. What an astonishing abuse of power.”
When the Biden administration began in January, lawyers in the case sought to determine if the government would take a new position. At the time, a lawyer for Mr. Trump said his client wanted to preserve his right to object to any handing over of such records.
Rep. Kevin Brady, of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways & Means Committee, said the Justice Department’s new opinion was a politically motivated invasion of privacy that “sets a dangerous precedent that weaponizes that tax code by giving Congress the dangerous power to rummage through anyone’s private tax returns for purely political reasons.”
Friday’s opinion, while not binding on the courts, is the latest legal action in which the Biden Justice Department has broken with positions held by the Trump administration. It illustrates that some of the legal fights that consumed the Trump era are likely to continue, as courts and senior law enforcement officials consider whether new boundary lines should be drawn around questions of presidential power, privacy, and privilege.
In 2019, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department said the demand for years of Mr. Trump’s personal and business taxes by Ways & Means chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., was not legitimate legislative work.
Based partly on that legal guidance, then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused the committee’s demands for the tax returns, saying Democrats were seeking them for partisan reasons.
Mr. Neal said he was seeking the documents to help determine “the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces the Federal tax laws against a President.” He reiterated that request this June and added additional reasons for it, saying the tax returns could show “hidden business entanglements raising tax law and other issues, including conflicts of interest” or “foreign financial influences on former President Trump that could inform relevant congressional legislation.”
Federal law gives the Ways & Means Committee broad authority to get tax information for any individual — although the committee cannot disseminate the information to others without taking additional steps.