Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin sent a letter to House Democrats Monday officially rejecting their request for President Trump’s personal and business income tax returns, prompting what will likely become a protracted legal battle.
“The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution requires that Congressional information demands must reasonably serve a legitimate legislative purpose,” he wrote in a one-page letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D., Mass). “I have determined that the Committee’s request lacks a legitimate legislative purpose,” the letter read, adding that “the Department is therefore not authorized to disclose the requested returns.”
The letter comes after the Trump administration ignored two previous deadlines to turn over six years of his business and personal tax returns. Neal can now resort to a subpoena, which will likely go ignored given the administration’s refusal to comply with a number of other subpoena-backed document requests, or file a legal challenge to obtain a court order.
“I will consult with counsel and determine the appropriate response,” Neal said in a statement released in response to Mnuchin’s letter.
In the letter, Mnuchin claims he is basing his refusal to comply on the Justice Department’s legal opinion, which, he writes, “it intends to memorialize its advice in a published legal opinion as soon as practicable.”
Trump has broken with decades of precedent by refusing to turn over his tax returns while campaigning for the presidency. Democrats claim have they the authority to correct for this aberration under a 1924 law that empowers the head of Congress’s tax committees to review any Americans’ tax returns.
Republicans, meanwhile, have argued that the requests represent congressional overreach and give members of Congress the ability to publicly wield personal financial information against their political enemies.