White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in an interview Sunday that congressional Democrats were not “smart enough” to examine and understand President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Speaking with “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, Sanders pushed back against requests by House Democrats to obtain information on Trump’s finances by April 23. In setting their deadline, Democratic lawmakers noted that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s concerns about the request are meritless.
During the interview, Sanders attacked Democrats, whom she said were treading a “dangerous road” in making a politically motivated partisan request.
“Frankly, Chris, I don’t think Congress — particularly not this group of congressmen and women — are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump’s taxes will be,” the press secretary said.
“My guess is most of them don’t do their own taxes, and I certainly don’t trust them to look through the decades of success that the president has and determine anything,” she added.
Sanders then claimed that the effort to obtain the President’s tax records created danger for “every American.”
Trump was the first president in decades to break with tradition and refuse to release his tax returns during the presidential campaign, maintaining they were under audit, a claim he still makes to avoid releasing them.
Earlier this month, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal asked the IRS in a letter to provide his committee with the President’s personal and business tax returns from the past six years. On Saturday, he sent a second letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig extending the deadline to April 23, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says is “arbitrary,” The Hill reports.
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