House Democrats vote to publicly release Trump's personal tax returns

• The Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee voted to release Trump's tax returns to the public.
• Trump broke with precedent during his 2016 run by refusing to release his tax returns.

House Democrats voted on Tuesday to publicly release six years' worth of former President Donald Trump's personal tax returns, a stunning loss for the embattled former president after years of fighting to protect his finances from public scrutiny.

The committee voted 24-16, along party lines, to publicize the tax filings in the coming days.

Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday evening that the panel would be releasing two reports covering the IRS audit program of presidential tax returns, legislative recommendations to strengthen tax transparency, and six years of Trump's tax filings — after all personal identifying information has been redacted.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal told congressional reporters that scrubbing all the documents would probably take a few days.

The outcome caps a protracted legal battle that involved heated exchanges on Capitol Hill, ping-ponging throughout the court system — culminating in a US Supreme Court stacked with three Trump appointees denying his last-ditch appeal for political cover — and lots of "see-they're-out-to-get-me" messaging from the uncooperative Trump White House.

The committee opened its hearing publicly for a few minutes on Tuesday afternoon before proceeding with a closed-door meeting that ran more than four-and-a-half hours. Neal said after the evening vote that the redaction process would remove information like social security numbers, street addresses, personal identification numbers, and banking information.

"Did we have enough time to conduct the review? Yes we did," Neal told reporters after the meeting, praising Ways and Means staff for combing through the trove of documents in under a month.

He also revealed that the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation — a scorekeeping agency — assisted with the review, and said its findings would be reflected in one of the two forthcoming reports.

Retiring Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, who also served on the Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, was one of the yes votes for releasing Trump's tax filings.

The information the committee is releasing may for the first time reveal the exact details of Trump's personal wealth, his tax payments, and his charitable giving — or could contain a summary. Some of this was already revealed in 2020 when The New York Times obtained decades of Trump's tax information. The Times' reporting revealed that Trump reported losing vast sums of money over an extended period and that he paid no federal income tax for years.

Trump 2024 campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blasted Democratic lawmakers for the forthcoming release of the highly anticipated tax records.

"This unprecedented leak by lameduck Democrats is proof they are playing a political game they are losing," he texted Insider, adding that if House lawmakers were truly interested in financial transparency they would release outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi's tax filings.

"Alongside their insider trading and shady stock deals, Congress needs to legitimately investigate their self-enriching financial scams," Cheung wrote. He also echoed House GOP claims that targeting Trump wouldn't be the end of it.

"If this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans without cause," Cheung wrote.

Democrats said Trump didn't get a presidential IRS audit

The unusual use of congressional authority to examine private tax returns came about after scandal-plagued Trump bucked decades of tradition by refusing to publicly release his filings while running for president in 2016, and throughout his single term in office.

Trump's go-to argument had been that he was under audit. In fact, the IRS has a program to automatically audit all US presidents to search for any potential conflicts of interest.

But Democrats revealed on Tuesday evening that they found Trump had not been under presidential audit. Neal told reporters the IRS program had been "non-existent," adding that no one at the agency fully reviewed Trump's taxes. Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas told CNN that "the IRS did no audits at all until such time as they received" the document request from Neal.

Democratic Rep. Judy Chu also said the only time the mandatory presidential audit program kicked in during the Trump years was when Neal wrote the IRS a letter asking about it.

"And none of the audits were completed," she said of the lack of follow-through by the federal tax agency.

As part of the committee's findings, Neal introduced a bill requiring the IRS to conduct mandatory audits of future presidents within 90 days of them taking office. The bill would have to clear both chambers within the next few days, before the end of this Congress, to become law.

"We think the mandatory audit program needs to be bolstered and boostered," Neal said.

It's still possible that Trump was under audit for an unrelated matter, Kildee said.

US Treasury officials gave Neal Trump's tax filings for 2015-2020 in late November. He put in for access to the sensitive financial records in April 2019, asking the Internal Revenue Service to share the information so the committee could review the agency's auditing process.

"After a long process, this was not about being punitive, it was not about being malicious, and there were no leaks from the committee," Neal said at the conclusion of the vote. "We adhered carefully to the law."

Staff counsel told Neal to avoid doing cable TV hits and fundraising off the tax returns to avoid any air of impropriety, he said, adding, "The idea was to prepare the case."

The twice-impeached former president recently announced that he's running again in 2024. The House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 siege at the US Capitol pressed the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute him for inciting the violent riot.

The Trump Organization, Trump's family-run business, was found guilty of tax fraud earlier this month. The verdict means Trump's company now risks up to $1.6 million in penalties on its January 13 sentencing date.

Neal and other Democratic tax writers have been deliberating about how to handle Trump's tax documents for weeks. Panelists who participated in a December 2 meeting seemed to retreat into two camps that afternoon: publish everything and proceed with caution.

Retiring House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Rep. Kevin Brady has been pushing the latter for years, pleading with Neal to abandon the tax disclosure hunt once Democrats reclaimed control of the House in 2019.