Democrats have renewed efforts to obtain President Donald Trump's tax returns in light of a bombshell New York Times investigation into the Trump family's finances, a push House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady called "dangerous" Thursday.
"Once Democrats abuse this law to make public" Trump's returns, Brady said in a tweet, "what stops them from prying/making public YOUR tax returns for political reasons? Who is next?"
Brady tweet
In a statement to CNBC, Brady said: "The Ways and Means Committee's authority to request and make public any individual's tax return is a powerful oversight tool to be used not for political fishing expeditions but to properly administer the tax code."
Brady is the top tax writer in the House.
Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, including ranking member Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said that he would work to obtain the tax documents if Democrats win majority control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections.
Neal told The Wall Street Journal that "we will do that" when asked whether he would request Trump's returns.
Trump had repeatedly said he would release his tax returns after an audit from the Internal Revenue Service was completed. However, an audit does not prohibit Trump from releasing his tax returns, multiple outlets have reported.
Trump's opponents have called on him to release his tax returns since he was a presidential candidate. His opponent at the time, Hillary Clinton, released multiple years of her own returns during the campaign.
Democratic efforts to get Trump's tax records appeared to be rejuvenated Tuesday, after The New York Times published an exhaustive investigation into decades of the Trump family's financial maneuvers.
The Times' report, which looked at thousands of documents over more than a year, said Trump had committed "instances of outright fraud" as part of tax avoidance schemes coordinated in part with his father, Fred Trump.
The newspaper also reported that the president had received millions of dollars from hundreds of revenue streams stemming from his father, as well as more than $60 million in loans from the elder Trump. The reporting directly contradicts Trump's oft-repeated claim that he had only received a single $1 million loan from his father.
The report triggered a response from New York state tax authorities, who said they were reviewing the allegations detailed in the Times article.
In a statement to the Times, Trump lawyer Charles Harder denied allegations of fraud and tax evasion, saying "the facts upon which The Times bases its allegations are extremely inaccurate." White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Trump himself dismissed the article as "boring."
Sanders on Wednesday also said that there were no plans to release the president's tax returns.
Rep. Bill Pascrell, who in the past had led the Ways and Means Committee minority's efforts to force a vote on snagging Trump's tax returns, said in a statement Tuesday: "We must see Trump's tax returns to know just how far and how deep the crimes go."
"I have led efforts to obtain Trump's tax returns using Ways and Means Committee authority, and Republicans have now voted 19 times against doing so," Pascrell, D-N.J., added. "I have been asking: What are they hiding?"
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