(PresidentialHill.com)- After years of legal fighting, the Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee finally gained access to six years of federal tax returns for former President Donald Trump.
The receipt of the documents comes with just about one month before Republicans take control of the House. Had Trump been able to delay the process just a little bit longer, it’s likely that the GOP-led House would have dropped the issue altogether.
However, Trump lost his latest push in that fight when the Supreme Court recently refused to step in and grant an emergency stay in the case that would’ve prevented the House from obtaining his tax returns while an appeal proceeded.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department confirmed to CNN this week that the they have complied with the latest decision by the court — meaning they turned over the tax returns to the House committee.
The committee requested Trump’s tax returns in 2019 and then again last year.
Trump has been fighting to keep his tax records private for years now. He bucked the trend of modern presidents to release his tax returns to the public while in the White House.
When the House committee requested the records, Trump and his legal team continued to fight to prevent that from happening. But, many judges, including various GOP appointees, all ruled that the House committee held the power to obtain those records from the Internal Revenue Service.
The Treasury official didn’t confirm to CNN which members of the committee had access to the tax records.
Democratic Representative Richard Neal from Massachusetts leads the House Ways and Means Committee, and led the push for six years of tax returns from both Trump’s corporate entities in addition to his personal returns.
An aide for Neal said that the committee had plans to meet on Thursday, at which time all members would be briefed on the legal ramifications of the tax law Neal used to obtain the tax returns.
It’s not expected that Democrats will review the returns during this session, and it’s also not expected that the documents would be made available to the public immediately.
Doug Letter, the general counsel for the House, was to be the one who was going to brief House committee members about Section 6103 of the tax law.
Neal wouldn’t comment to media outlets about whether he personally had possession of the tax returns for Trump. He said that law prohibits him or anyone else from discussing what the state of those documents were.
The committee head also wouldn’t say whether the panel had the intention to release the tax returns to the public. The only thing he did say is
“The next step is to have a meeting of the Democratic caucus.”
In fighting to keep his tax records private, Trump warned of “far-reaching implications” if the DC Circuit Court’s ruling were allowed to stand. His legal team argued to the Supreme Court:
“No Congress have ever wielded its legislative powers to demand a President’s tax returns.”
