House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi D-Calif., said Thursday that obtaining President Trump’s tax returns as part of an investigation into possible tax evasion or other lawbreaking will be “challenging.”
“I think it’s a little more challenging than you might think,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “Yes, there is popular demand for the Congress to request the president’s tax returns,” but, “I’m sure that the White House will resist and the question is, where do we go from there?”
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is expected to be Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., in the next Congress, will have the power to request tax returns of anyone, including the president and his company. Several times last year Democrats moved to have the committee vote to request those returns, but were turned back by Republicans who decried the maneuver as a political stunt.
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Pelosi said she thought Neal and the incoming Democratic majority at the committee would request those returns, but that she would leave the decision to him.
“I think they see a path in that direction, but you have to talk to them about that,” she said. “I think that they’ll take the first steps.”
Though Democrats can request Trump’s returns from the Treasury Department, which the Internal Revenue Service is a part of, it’s not yet clear how Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would handle such a request. He’s said multiple times only that he will consult with the department’s legal counsel.
Another hurdle to satisfying Democrats’ desire to request Trump’s tax information is that disclosing that information without the consent of the president would be a felony. That means Democrats may have to come up with some creative ways to achieve their stated goal of illuminating Trump’s finances.
Of course, Trump could end the discussion by voluntarily releasing his tax returns to Congress, as President Richard Nixon did when he was suspected of underpaying taxes on a real estate sale. Though Trump has repeatedly said he cannot because of an ongoing audit, there’s nothing preventing him from doing so. Every president is automatically placed under audit by the IRS.
Paraphrasing what someone told her at a recent event, Pelosi joked about Trump’s audit.
“When the president says the Mueller investigation is going on too long, tell him, not as long as your audit, Mr. President,” the California Democrat mused.
