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Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Says It’s ‘Unlawful’ to Give Democrats Trump’s Tax Returns
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May 22, 2019
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1:56:16Now PlayingTreasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said it would be “unlawful” to give President Donald Trump’s tax returns to Congress and asserted that a confidential IRS draft memo revealed on Tuesday didn’t contradict him.
“If I had turned them over, I would have been violating the law,” Mnuchin told the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal, has demanded six years of Trump’s returns under a law allowing him to make such requests. The 10-page IRS memo, first reported by the Washington Post, concluded Treasury had no choice but to turn over the documents.
Mnuchin said he relied on advice from the Department of Justice, which told him turning over the returns would violate the Constitution.
An April session with the Financial Services panel ended in acrimony after Mnuchin and Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who chairs the panel, bickered over when to end the questioning.
The conflict reflects a broader standoff between the Trump administration and the House, as Democrats seek to build on Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and delve into the the president’s personal finances. The administration is stonewalling. Mnuchin has refused to hand over Trump’s tax returns, and the White House has instructed some current and former officials not to appear for hearings, including former White House Counsel Don McGahn and Attorney General William Barr.
In response, Democrats have more seriously considered opening impeachment proceedings.
Mnuchin on Friday rejected Neal’s subpoena for Trump’s personal and business tax returns, setting up a potential court battle over the documents. The move prompted Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, to conclude that Mnuchin should be arrested for “inherent contempt.”
Earlier this month House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joked that there is a “little jail” on Capitol Hill for the Treasury chief, if needed.
The IRS memo obtained by the Post contradicts Mnuchin’s justification for withholding Trump’s returns. The paper reported on Tuesday that the memo concludes it is “mandatory” that the Treasury secretary release the information requested by chairmen of the tax-writing committees.
Mnuchin said Wednesday he didn’t know of the memo before the department was contacted by the Post and that he didn’t believe it addressed the same issues that led the Department of Justice to advise him not to hand over Trump’s tax returns. He said the memo was written by an IRS attorney, but that the department didn’t know who it was or why it wasn’t sent to more senior Treasury officials.
Mnuchin repeated that he had “no conversations ever with the president or anyone in the White House” about sending the returns to Congress.
The comments mirrored comments from a Treasury spokesman who said no one in the agency’s leadership had seen the IRS’ memo and that the decision to withhold Trump’s financial records was based on advice from the Justice Department.
At the April hearing before Waters’s panel, Mnuchin asked for the session to end so that he could attend a scheduled meeting with Bahrain’s interior minister. Waters asked for Mnuchin to remain for another 10 minutes. He said he could stay for 5 minutes, and offered to return to testify in May. She refused to formally dismiss him.
“If this is the way you will treat me, I will rethink” returning, Mnuchin said.
Waters complained that no Treasury secretary had previously attempted to set a time limit on his testimony. Mnuchin, who’d testified earlier in the day before a Senate panel, retorted that no other secretary had been treated like him.
Aides to Mnuchin and Waters didn’t respond to questions this week about whether the two leaders had made amends.
Lawmakers on Wednesday also will have the chance to ask about Treasury’s role in policing money-laundering activities -- a likely point of interest after the New York Times reported on Sunday that some bank transactions by Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, raised suspicions among anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank AG.
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