US lawmakers voted on Tuesday to release former Republican President Donald Trump’s tax returns, who fought a years-long legal battle to keep them secret.
• Also read: Trump’s decision to ban immigrants at the US border, which was upheld by the Supreme Court
• Also read: Criminal charges have been recommended against Trump
Before the vote, the Democrats-elect did not rule out publishing this tax data immediately after it was approved, but the exact date of publication was not yet known immediately after the vote.
Donald Trump, who has embarked on a new race for the White House for the year 2024, has not made his tax returns public, unlike all his predecessors since the 1970s, which has raised many questions about their content.
A House committee, which sat particularly on tax matters and with a Democratic majority until the inauguration of the new Republican majority in early January, voted 24 in favor and 16 against to publish six years from the billionaire. Tax returns between 2015 and 2020.
This group of elected officials has been demanding for three years what documents the billionaire sends to the IRS between these years, which he refused. The Supreme Court finally ruled in their favor at the end of November.
So far only a few elected officials have been able to read it.
The lack of transparency of Donald Trump, who has made his wealth an argument in his campaign, has fueled speculation for years about the extent of his wealth or potential conflicts of interest.
His family’s company, The Trump Organization, was found guilty in early December of financial and tax fraud after a trial in New York where the former Republican president did not stand trial.
Kevin Brady, the elected Republican on the committee, had warned before the vote that the potential publication would “open the door” for parliamentarians “to have almost unlimited powers to attack their political enemies by obtaining their own tax returns and making them public.”
“Even if the Democrats assert that they are not political,” continued a Republican-elect press release, “their eagerness to release the documents with a sloppy accelerated process shows that their motives are indeed political.”
