The Organization Ways and Means Committee is preparing to formally ask the Internal Revenue Service for President Donald Trump’s tax returns, under any circumstances within the next few weeks, NBC News reported Friday.
The Democrat-led tax-writing committee is willing to take legal clash, if necessary, to obtain copies of years of Trump’s returns, congressional aides involved in the process told NBC.
Ways and Contemplates Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., has reportedly directed his committee’s attorneys to prepare the request, and has asked other investigative boards to draft arguments about why their probes also require viewing Trump’s tax returns. Neal’s committee is the alone House panel with the authority to make the request.
Trump broke with long-standing precedent by refusing to emancipation his tax returns as a presidential candidate. He claimed on multiple occasions that he was waiting for an audit to be completed — but after winning the presidency, his elder advisor, Kellyanne Conway, said Trump was “not going to release his tax returns” because “people didn’t care.”
Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., a associate of the Ways and Means Committee, “believes the time is now to request Trump’s business and personal tax returns pursuant to Congress’s plain authority under” the law, a spokesman said in a statement to CNBC.
Read the full report from NBC News.