Democrats are threatening to seize President Donald Trump’s often-requested tax returns if their candidates take the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections.
“I’m definitely going to bring it up if we don’t have them by then — that’s a definite,” Ways and Means panel member Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), told The Hill.
The Democrats are arguing that legislation already exists to allow Congressional committees to seize a president’s tax returns. They say the Republicans have refused to utilize those powers, but if Democrats assume a majority in the House, they will be more than willing to do so.
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), who also sits on the Ways and Means committee also told the Hill that a Democratic-controlled House would demand to see the tax returns.
“That’s part of cleaning up Washington, D.C.,” Chu said, referring to a central promise of Democrats on the campaign trail this year. “The appetite is there.”
However, others have banked on finding seismic revelations in Trump’s tax records in the past and been left looking foolish. In 2017, the New York Times claimed that the president had “could have avoided taxes for nearly two decades,” only to be struck dumb by the release of a 2005 Trump tax return that indicated he had paid $38 million in taxes on $150 million in income.
Trump maintains global business interests that include financial ties to 500 businesses.