Who cares about the law when you’ve got the Supreme Court in your back pocket?
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin formally denied a request by House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal on Monday — Neal asked the Treasury Department to turn over several years of President Trump’s tax forms.
As a matter of law, this wasn’t so much a request as it was a mandatory demand, and Mnuchin’s response to Neal places the secretary in direct violation of the law. While the tax code provides that an individual’s tax forms generally should be kept confidential, one provision of that code provides that the Treasury Secretary “shall furnish” the Ways and Means Committee “with any return or return information specified in” a written request from the committee’s chair.
The law does provide some procedural protection for Trump — his return “shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session” — but the law provides no grounds whatsoever permitting Mnuchin to deny the request.
View the complete May 7 article by Ian Millhiser on the ThinkProgress website here.