House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal took the step Wednesday of officially requesting Donald Trump’s tax returns for the last six years, 2013 through 2018. Chairman Neal, who has the statutory authority to make such a query as head of the panel, requested tax returns from the following entities:
- The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust
- DJT Holdings LLC
- DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC
- DTTM Operations LLC
- DTTM Operations Managing Member Corp
- LFB Acquisition Member Corp
- LFB Acquisition LLC
- Lamington Farm Club, LLC d/b/a Trump National Golf Club—Bedminster
Neal wants to know whether any of those entities were under audit, for how long, the statute of limitations on that audit, the issues under audit and reasons for the audit, and the present status of the audit. Fun!
Neal has given the IRS until April 10 to return the requested information.
At the same time, House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings is preparing a friendly subpoena to obtain 10 years of Trump’s financial records from an accounting firm he used.
Democrats have clearly decided to get Trump’s financial information one way or the other. It’s information that was likely included in at least some of Robert Mueller’s final report, but they’ve decided not to wait and see whether they get a Swiss-cheese version of that document from the Justice Department.
There’s no reason to wait anymore. Attorney General William Barr missed Democrats’ April 2 deadline to receive Mueller’s report. House Democrats are clearly going to have to fight tooth and nail for every bit of information they get from Trump’s White House and administration, because cooperation clearly isn’t in the offing. May as well start that process sooner rather than later.