President Joe Biden’s administration has handed over years of former President Donald Trump’s federal tax returns to the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Treasury has complied with last week’s court decision,” a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, which includes the IRS, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 30.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected a request from the former president to block the IRS from transmitting the returns, lifting a stay that Chief Justice John Roberts had temporarily imposed.
The lifting of the stay meant an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit came back into effect. That order had directed the IRS to transmit the materials to the House.
Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been seeking six years of Trump tax returns since 2019.
A spokesperson for the panel declined to immediately comment on the Treasury’s statement.
“Since the Magna Carta, the principle of oversight has been upheld, and today is no different,” Neal said in a statement after the Supreme Court decision. “This rises above politics, and the Committee will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”
Trump and his lawyers had argued that the bid to get the records was politically motivated and designed to publicly release sensitive information, pointing to statements to that effect by leading Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But several courts said Neal had put forth a legitimate legislative purpose.
Purpose
Neal, who hasn’t sought records from any other president, says the materials are needed to examine the way the IRS audits presidents.
The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2019 said that Neal’s stated reason for requesting the records was “implausible.”
