Former president Donald Trump’s tax returns will be made public Friday morning as part of the House’s congressional record, according to a person familiar with the process cited by CNN.
The six years of Trump’s tax returns – from 2015-2020 – will be released by the House Ways and Means Committee after it enters them into the congressional record during a Pro-forma session – that typically lasts only a few minutes – on Friday morning.
The House can schedule a “pro forma” session in which no legislative business is technically conducted despite the fact that no votes are currently scheduled for Friday and Congress will not reconvene until Jan. 3.
The committee, which has already released a summary of some of the information from the records, including the annual taxes Trump paid, will also issue a formal release.
The highly anticipated release comes in light of the 24-16 vote last week when Committee members decided to release the tax information of the former president after legally protected information had been redacted, including bank account numbers and Social Security numbers.
Although, at the time, the Democrats on the committee said they needed several days to redact sensitive information from the forms, the process is still ongoing.
The lawmakers, however, already released a report by the Joint Committee on Taxation – the Congress’ brain trust on tax issues – outlining, among other items, the amount of taxes Trump paid (2015-2020), as well as a report on an IRS program that mandates the audits of sitting presidents.
Although the courts ultimately ordered the Treasury Department to turn over the former president’s documents to the congressional committee – which had been seeking them since Democrats retook the House majority in 2019 – Trump has long fought for nearly four years to keep his tax records private.
The release of Trump’s tax returns marks the conclusion that the legal battle House Democrats waged against him in part due to long-held suspicions about the former president’s taxes after refused to release his returns during the presidential race and while he was in office.
Be the first to comment