Former president Donald Trump’s tax return must be shared with House Democrats who have for years demanded access to them, the Justice Department said Friday in a written legal opinion.
The decision marks another significant legal setback for Trump, who has fought a multi-fronted campaign to keep his tax records secret from prosecutors, lawmakers, and the public. Trump was the first president in decades to refuse to share his tax returns as a candidate or while in office.
Earlier this year, Trump’s taxes were turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney, after a separate legal fight in which the Supreme Court declined to intervene. The prosecutor’s office has been examining Trump’s finances as part of a criminal probe of his businesses, and has indicted Trump’s longtime financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, on tax charges. Weisselberg has denied the charges.
While he was president, Trump successfully beat back efforts by the House Ways & Means Committee to see his tax returns, including a battle in federal court. But the new opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said the committee’s request to see the records — as part of its oversight over the Internal Revenue Service’s presidential audit program — is valid and should be fulfilled.
House Democrats had sought years of the president’s personal and business tax returns, and federal law gives the Ways & Means Committee broad authority to get an individual’s tax information.
In a 39-page legal opinion, the Biden Justice Department concluded that seeking Trump’s taxes serves “a legitimate legislative purpose.”
The Justice Department said the committee “has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information.” The agency sent the legal opinion to the Treasury Department, which would formally deliver Trump’s returns to the committee.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the former president would take any new legal action in court to try to block the release.
Friday’s move by the Justice Department reverses a determination made in 2019 by Trump administration lawyers that the demand for Trump’s personal and business taxes by committee chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) was not legitimate legislative work.
Based partly on that legal guidance, Trump’s then-Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, had refused the committee’s demands for the tax returns, saying Democrats were seeking them for partisan reasons.
Neal said he was seeking the documents to help determine “the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces the Federal tax laws against a President.” He re-iterated that request in June and added additional reasons for it, saying the tax returns could show “hidden business entanglements raising tax law and other issues, including conflicts of interest,” or “foreign financial influences on former President Trump that could inform relevant congressional legislation.”
After the Justice Department released its new analysis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the Biden administration “has delivered a victory for the rule of law.”
Access to Trump’s tax returns “is a matter of national security,” the speaker said. “The American people deserve to know the facts of his troubling conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president.”
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