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Sources believe the official request will be filed by the House Oversight Committee in the coming weeks.
A decade of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax returns will be turned over to the House of Representatives tax committee, Representative Bill Pascrell said Tuesday.
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“My prediction would be the next couple of weeks. That’s my gut feeling. I told you four weeks ago that it would be a month,” Pascrell told Reuters reporters.
Trump defied decades of precedent as a presidential candidate by refusing to release the tax documents and has continued to keep them under wraps as president, saying his returns were under audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen whetted Democrats’ interest in obtaining the documents last week, when he testified before the House Oversight Committee that Trump avoided releasing his returns for fear he would be audited and penalized by tax authorities.
Democrats hope that obtaining the returns will allow them to identify any conflicts of interest posed by Trump’s global business empire.
But Republicans oppose the effort, saying such a move would set a dangerous precedent by turning the confidential tax documents of a U.S. citizen into a political weapon.
Pascrell made it clear he had not been given a timeline by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, who is the only House lawmaker authorized by law to request Trump’s returns from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The administration is widely expected to refuse such a request.
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