Trump tax returns are at the center of a new court fight, as Donald Trump’s attorneys ask a federal judge to block the House Ways and Means Committee from getting his 2019 returns. They argue the release will expose “private tax information” for “political gain.”
For two years, the House Ways and Means Committee has requested the documents to see how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits presidents and if Trump conducted business with Russian oligarchs. The committee sued the IRS in 2019 after the agency refused to give up the requested items.
The Department of Justice sent a memo to the Treasury Department last month directing the office to hand over Trump’s tax returns to the congressional committee.
“The statute at issue is unambiguous: ‘Upon written request’ of the chairman of one of the three congressional tax committees, the Secretary ‘shall furnish’ the requested tax information to the Committee,” Dawn Johnsen, acting Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), wrote in a 39-page memo.
Trump’s attorneys argue in a court filing that Trump’s constitutional rights will be violated if the documents are given to the committee. The attorneys also say that Congress is exceeding its authority by requesting Trump’s private information.
“The requests are tailored to, and in practical operation will affect, only [Trump],” the filing reads. “The requests single out [Trump] because he is a Republican and a political opponent. They were made to retaliate against [Trump] because of his policy positions, his political beliefs, and his protected speech, including the positions he took during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns.”
“The primary purpose of the requests is to obtain and expose [Trump’s] information for the sake of exposure, to improperly conduct law enforcement or some other impermissible goal, not to study federal legislation.”
