Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee were so busy patting themselves on the back after Wednesday’s partisan vote to publicly release former President Donald Trump’s tax returns that they forgot one thing: explain why this is legally necessary or appropriate. The vote was not an attempt to uphold the law or prove illegality, but to satisfy the curiosity of millions of Americans who just want to see the tax returns of a billionaire former president.
It’s almost lewd, as if Congress had agreed to release tax pornography for public viewing. Just because the committee’s chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, praised his colleagues for not being “punitive” or “malicious” doesn’t make their decision right. When reporters pressed the members to explain why the release was necessary, they appeared to struggle for a legal justification. That’s likely because current federal law doesn’t require future, sitting, or former presidents to make their returns public.
This release is strictly voluntary, something every major party candidate since the Nixon administration has done to show they have nothing to hide. Trump decided not to. Any implication that he had something to hide was a political risk he was willing to take.
Trump was within his legal right not to release his returns, regardless of the bogus excuse he gave that he couldn’t while there was an Internal Revenue Service audit. The Ways and Means Committee short-circuited his right to privacy.
Several states have passed laws requiring candidates to publicly release their tax returns or deny them a place on the ballot. Congress should consider a similar federal law or, more specifically, one that would require all presidential candidates, as well as past or current presidents, to release their tax returns. But since Congress has not done so, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee had to craft a legal rule on Trump.
In all likelihood, the six years of returns being prepared for release contain plenty of salacious details. In all likelihood, Trump skirted the law and defrauded the United States Treasury of millions, even hundreds of millions, of dollars in back taxes. If so, have the Internal Revenue Service prove it.
In this regard, the IRS clearly failed in its legal requirement to audit Trump as a sitting president. During his first two years in office, no such audit took place, in violation of the law. Why this happened, whether due to dereliction of duty or pressure from Trump, are legitimate questions that Congress should try to answer.
Congress’s job is to uphold the law, which is where Republicans fell when it came to investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol uprising. Democrats are proving no less inclined to put politics above the law when they deny a citizen, even if it were the president, the right to privacy of tax reports. This decision does not pass the smell test.
