House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got laughs Wednesday when she answered questions about President Donald Trump’s tax returns and joked about arresting Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for keeping the returns private.
“Could you hold the Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin in contempt? Some Democrats have even raised the prospect of arresting the Treasury secretary if he does not comply with congressional demands,” Washington Post reporter Robert Costa asked Pelosi at the paper’s “116th Congress: State of Play” event.
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“Well, let me just say that we do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol,” Pelosi responded. “But if we were arresting all of the people in the administration, we would have overcrowded jail situation, and I’m not for that.” (RELATED: Someone Leaked 10 Years Of Trump’s Tax Info To The New York Times)
But her joke might not have been historically accurate.
Axios busted the idea of a Capitol basement jail as a “myth” Sunday. As House Democrats issue subpoenas for information related to Trump on multiple fronts, they are considering some “long-shot measures.” But unfortunately for them, the space often assumed to be a jail in the Capitol is “used to store the cherished Lincoln Catafalque, the pedestal for caskets during state funerals.”
Pelosi also responded at the WaPo event to a Tuesday night story by The New York Times that stated Trump’s core businesses lost roughly $1 billion between 1985 and 1994. She called the story’s claims “nothing new.”
The Times said it received “information contained in the returns from someone who had legal access to it” and “confirmed significant findings using other public documents.”
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin shakes hands with Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
The information is not from the more recent time period House Democrats are demanding to see.
House Democrats going after Trump’s tax returns will have to provide a legitimate legislative reason for why they want them should they take their quest to the courts.
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