Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin denied on Tuesday that he is coordinating with the White House regarding the administration’s handling of a congressional demand to review President Trump’s tax returns, and he declined to say if he would cooperate with that request.
Mnuchin did say, however, that there has been communication between lawyers at the Treasury and the White House over the congressional inquiry into Trump’s tax filings.
Mnuchin said it is his “intent to follow the law” regarding the request, made last week by Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, but he demurred when asked if he would meet Neal’s April 10 deadline.
A refusal from Mnuchin could send the tax returns inquiry to the courts, as the Trump administration said it would late last week. Personal attorneys for Trump wrote the IRS on Friday in an attempt to head off the request. The tax code grants power to the heads of congressional tax committees, and if desired, their staff, to review confidential tax information.
“I want to be very clear so there’s no misunderstanding … I have not made a comment one way or another if we will supply the tax returns,” Mnuchin said in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday afternoon.
“I have not had any conversations with anybody in the White House about this,” said Mnuchin in a separate congressional hearing on Tuesday morning. “I have not spoken to the White House chief of staff or president about this decision.”
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday that Congress would “never” obtain Trump’s tax returns.
Mnuchin was less combative, repeating prior statements that he would follow the law, and that the Treasury Department’s lawyers were reviewing that request.
“When we received the request it would be reviewed by our legal department and it is our intent to follow the law,” said Mnuchin.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that Mnuchin appeared before Tuesday, repeatedly pressed the treasury secretary to remove himself from the decision to hand over the president’s tax returns, which the law says the treasury secretary “shall” do.
“Respectfully, sir, I would disagree with you that your office should be weighing this decision, of the request coming from the Ways and Means chairman, at all,” Quigley said.
Mnuchin responded by noting that House Republicans, when they were in the majority, could have demanded individual Democrats’ tax returns.
“I am sure there are many prominent Democrats who are relieved that when [Rep.] Kevin Brady [R-Texas] was chairman of the [Ways and Means] committee he didn’t request specific returns,” said Mnuchin.
