(Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns are expected to be released by the House Ways and Means committee on Friday, a congressional aide confirmed Tuesday.
That’s the next time the House, which is on break for the holidays, is scheduled to meet for a routine pro forma session. The new Congress, with Republicans in control of the House, begins Jan. 3.
The aide was not authorized to discuss the timing of the release publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Democratic-controlled committee voted last week to release Trump’s returns, with some redactions of sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers and contact information.
The vote came the same day the panel released a report in which it found that the IRS failed to pursue mandatory audits of Trump on a timely basis during his presidency.
It indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded an IRS requirement dating back to 1977 that mandates audits of a president’s tax filings.
The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019, more than two years into Trump’s presidency and just months after Democrats took control of the House. That date coincided with Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the panel chairman, asking the IRS for information related to Trump’s tax returns.
The vote was the culmination of a yearslong fight between Trump and Democrats that played out everywhere from the campaign trail to the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court.
Democrats on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake, while Republicans countered that the release would set a dangerous precedent with regard to the loss of privacy protections.
By Trump holding out on turning over his tax statements until it was ruled upon by the Supreme Court that he MUST turn over his taxes, it sets a SCOTUS precedent that EVERY current/former politician has no choice but to turn theirs over upon demand from the House. #MassAuditNow
— John Rich🇺🇸 (@johnrich) December 23, 2022
Releasing Trump’s tax returns is like ‘money laundering’- the IRS could not release to the public but to Congress per court order and then Congress releases under theory of transparency
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) December 28, 2022
2. The precedent is now established.https://t.co/5x4ChyPztR
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 23, 2022
Democrats coyly deflected by insisting Trump was the exception, not the rule.
“This is about the presidency, not the president,” Neal told reporters last week.
Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the panel’s top GOP member, said, “Regrettably, the deed is done.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
