In the News

The Justice Department on Friday said the Internal Revenue Service must hand over former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is headed by U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield.

“As I have maintained for years, the Committee’s case is very strong and the law is on our side. I am glad that the Department of Justice agrees and that we can move forward,” Neal said in a statement.

Neal’s been careful in choosing his words in the case, framing it as a test of Congress’ constitutional ability to oversee the Executive Branch and a concept that’s important even with the defeated Trump out of office. Neal has even said his case has its roots in English Common Law and the Magna Carta.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted that the Biden administration had “delivered a victory for the rule of law as it respects the public interest.”

“I applaud Chairman Neal for his dignified pursuit of the truth & the Biden Admin DOJ for its respect for the law,” Pelosi said. “The American people deserve to know the facts of (Trump’s) conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president. The House will always fight to expose the truth.”

In a 39-page memo dated Friday, the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel said the Neal “has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information” and that under federal law the “Treasury must furnish the information to the Committee.”

“We cannot know where receipt of the requested tax information will take the Committee, any more than the Committee itself can predict what it will find or determine. After reviewing and analyzing the information, it will be squarely within the Committee’s responsibility to decide whether or not to include some of that information in a report to the full House that might be available to the public,” according to the memo.

The memo is signed by Dawn Johnsen, installed by the Biden administration as acting head of the legal counsel office.

Johnsen said she presumed the House Ways and Means Committee “will handle the tax information it receives with sensitivity to taxpayer privacy concerns and therefore will include in such a report only the information it believes appropriate for the particular congressional task at hand.”

Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had said he would not turn over the tax returns. He was succeeded by Janet Yellen.

In New York, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. already has copies of Trump’s personal and business tax records as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the Trump Organization.

Prosecutors allege that the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, engaged in a 15-year tax scheme. They face 15 felony counts, including tax fraud, falsifying records and grand larceny to avoid paying taxes on more than $1 million worth of fringe benefits.