House Democrats will seek President Trump’s undisclosed tax returns before too long in 2019, lawmakers said Wednesday.
“We will be requesting the taxes within the next two or three months, or sooner,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Democrats on the tax-writing panel plan to request the president’s returns, and if he refuses to provide them, they’ll “take him to court,” Pascrell told the Washington Examiner.
Lawmakers discussed the plan to seek Trump’s taxes a day after the president delivered a State of the Union address in which he urged Democrats to back off their investigations into him and his administration, comments Democrats interpreted as a threat.
The Ways and Means Committee will begin the process Thursday with a scheduled hearing on “legislative proposals and tax law related to presidential and vice presidential tax returns.”
Trump’s lawyers began anticipating a legal fight over the president’s returns as soon as House Democrats won the majority in November, which gave them the power to run committees, order investigations, and issue subpoenas.
Congress could seek Trump’s returns using a 1924 Internal Revenue Code provision that was created when lawmakers were investigating conflict of interest allegations among government officials serving in the Harding administration.
Democrats have criticized Trump for withholding his returns, arguing most modern-day presidential candidates have released them.
Democrats believe they have legal standing to demand Trump’s returns because they may show evidence that Trump’s businesses, now in a trust, are in conflict with his role as president.
“The history is very clear that Congress has this authority,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
Some House Democrats have grown impatient that they have not already moved to get the Treasury Department to turn over Trump’s returns more than a month after the party took control of the House.
Committee action began slowly due to the recent government shutdown, but Democrats, particularly freshmen who promised in their campaigns to pursue Trump’s tax returns, want Ways and Means to act soon.
“We do want to be respectful and give a little bit of time for committees to get going but obviously this is a top issue and a top issue for a lot of Democrats who just won election,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said. “They talked about this when they were running, so we do need to make sure that the American people know we are looking out for what we’ve had from every other president.”
Khanna is also hoping for quick action and said hearings are not even needed, given the past use of the 1924 law to seize tax returns.
“The precedent is there,” Khanna said.
But Pascrell said Democrats see risks involved and plan to act carefully.
Thursday’s hearing includes a panel of tax and legal experts as well as a representative from the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“You walk a tightrope in trying to keep politics out of this thing,” Pascrell said.”I’m concerned about that. We all should be concerned about that, because in a democracy we need to do it in a rational fashion.”
