(Daily Mail) It ends a nearly four year long fight between liberal lawmakers and the former president, who fought tooth-and-nail to shield his financial statements from public view.
Debate lasted for more than three hours behind closed doors before a final vote of 24 to 16. All Democrats voted in favor of the action while all Republicans on the panel voted against.
It’s not immediately clear when the documents will be released.
‘Regrettably, the deed is done,’ Rep. Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the panel, told reporters in a press conference after the vote.
Six years’ worth of Trump’s most recent tax returns will be covered and documents from eight of his businesses.
That was the original request made by committee chairman Rep. Richard Neal in 2019, after Democrats won back the House majority in their 2018 ‘blue wave.’
‘Over our objections and opposition, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee have unleashed a dangerous new political weapon that overturns decades of privacy protections for average taxpayers,’ Brady said at his press conference.
Donald Trump has fought for years to keep his tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee
The committee’s Democratic chairman Rep. Richard Neal said the decision was ‘neither punitive nor malicious’ in remarks after the vote
He claimed it had ‘nothing to do with the stated purpose of reviewing the IRS presidential audit process.’
Throughout his remarks he stressed that it was Trump’s ‘personal’ returns at the heart of the matter.
The former president waged a lengthy legal battle to keep lawmakers from obtaining his tax returns that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Last month, justices rejected Trump’s last-ditch request to stop Ways and Means Democrats from getting the financial documents. None of the six conservative nor three liberal jurists dissented.
GOP Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, another Ways and Means Republican, called Democrats’ fight for Trump’s taxes a ‘witch hunt.’
Chairman Neal opened his own post-vote remarks comparing the committee room’s layout to the way it looked on January 6, when furniture was used to barricade doors and windows as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.
But during his press conference he insisted the move to release the ex-president’s tax returns was ‘not punitive or malicious.’
Ways and Means committee staffers were seen wheeling boxes full of documents to the panel’s chamber on Tuesday afternoon
Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the committee’s top Republican, claimed ‘average taxpayers’ will be harmed by the decision to release Trump’s taxes
