Democrats are planning to use a nearly century-old tax statute to get a hold of President Donald Trump's tax returns should they win control of either the House or Senate in November's midterm elections, and they could make the information public.
"Probably the approach would be to get all of it, review it and, depending on what that shows, release all or part of it," Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, told Politico.
"There are legitimate oversight questions that can only be answered by having those documents," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking member of the Senate Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth Subcommittee, added.
The 1924 law allows the chairmen of Congress' tax committees to look at anybody's tax returns, notes Fox News. According to that law, the Treasury Department shall turn over "any return or return information" that is requested either by the tax committees of the head of the Congressional nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
The rule was passed because of concerns and conflicts of interest over the business interests of then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, a wealthy banker and industrialist.
Trump was slammed during his 2016 presidential campaign and after for refusing to make his tax returns public. He claimed at the time, his returns were being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, and said he would release them when the audit was finished.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.