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The House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday night to release Donald Trump’s tax returns.
It ends a years-long struggle between Democratic lawmakers and the former president, who fought tooth and nail to shield his financial statements from public view.
The debate lasted for more than three hours behind closed doors before a final vote of 24-16. All Democrats voted for the action, while all Republicans on the panel voted against it.
It is not immediately clear when the documents will be released.
Rep. Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the panel, told reporters that Trump’s most recent tax returns of six years and documents from eight of his businesses would be covered.
“Sadly, deed is done,” Brady told reporters at a news conference after the vote.
That was the original request made by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, in 2019, after Democrats recaptured the House majority in their 2018 ‘blue wave’.
“Despite our objections and opposition, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee have unleashed a dangerous new political weapon that nullifies decades of privacy protections for average taxpayers,” Brady said at his press conference.
Donald Trump has fought for years to keep his tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee
The committee’s Democratic chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, said the decision was “neither punitive nor malicious” in comments after the vote.
He stated that it “had nothing to do with the stated purpose of reviewing the IRS presidential audit process.”
Throughout his remarks, he stressed that the heart of the matter was Trump’s “personal” returns.
The former president waged a lengthy legal battle to prevent lawmakers from getting his tax returns that made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
Last month, the justices rejected Trump’s latest request to prevent Ways and Means Democrats from obtaining the financial documents. None of the six conservative jurists nor the three liberals dissented.
Republican Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, another ways-and-means Republican, called the Democrats’ fight over Trump taxes a “witch hunt.”
Chairman Neal opened his own post-vote remarks by comparing the layout of the committee room to how it looked on January 6, when furniture was used to shield doors and windows as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in USA
But during his press conference he insisted that the move to release the former president’s tax returns “was not punitive or malicious.”
Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford said after Neal’s comments: ‘We take our job seriously, and this vote tonight was not taken lightly. But clearly we have a lot of work to do to rebuild the IRS.’
He said the tax agency “has been defunded for more than a decade by Republican cuts.”
Ways and Means committee staff members were seen carrying boxes full of documents into the panel chamber on Tuesday afternoon.
Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the committee, said “average taxpayers” will be hurt by Trump’s tax break decision.
Committee staff members were seen carrying stacks of documents into the committee room Tuesday afternoon before the vote.
Trump defied years of precedent during the 2016 campaign when he refused to release his tax returns while running for president.
He has kept it close to the vest ever since, but a New York Times The report in 2020 uncovered nearly two decades of Trump tax documents, but did not include the most recent at the time, from 2018 and 2019.
That report showed that the former president allegedly evaded paying federal income taxes for 11 of the 18 years examined.
Documents released after Tuesday’s House committee vote will provide a more up-to-date look at Trump’s finances, including the two years since he left office.
It is the second blow to the former president’s financial credibility this month alone, in the context of several other legal problems.
The committee meeting opened publicly Tuesday but then quickly turned into a private session for more than three hours.
On December 7, a Manhattan jury in Trump’s home state of New York found his family’s real estate empire guilty on multiple counts of tax fraud, among other criminal charges.
And Tuesday’s congressional committee vote comes a day after another House panel, the select committee investigating Jan. 6, voted unanimously to remand Trump on criminal charges.
The committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans held a dramatic final hearing on Monday, summing up their public case over Trump’s culpability for the riot in the cavernous chamber of the Cannon House office building.
They sent recommendations to Attorney General Merrick Garland on four counts against Trump: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and to ‘incite’, ‘assist’ or ‘assist’ an insurrection.
The recommendation is only a token rebuke unless Garland decides to accept it.
Trump responded to the Jan. 6 committee in a post on his Truth Social app Monday night, writing, “These people don’t understand that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me.” It makes me stronger. What does not kill me makes me stronger.