Officials said a US federal judge on Tuesday denied former President Donald Trump’s legal bid to prevent Congress from accessing his tax returns.
Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee to the district court in Washington, said Trump’s legal team was “wrong on the law” in battling Democratic demands to see the former US president’s tax papers for two years.
The decision is a big setback for Trump, who has battled tooth and nail to keep his tax returns hidden despite campaign promises to reveal them in 2016.
Trump said that the Democratic-led House of Representatives’ effort was motivated by politics.
The verdict came as “no surprise,” according to Democratic Congressman Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which led the fight to gain access to the tax returns.
In a statement, he added, “I am glad that we are now one step closer to being able to conduct more complete oversight of the IRS’s mandated presidential audit program.”
In August, the Justice Department ordered the Treasury to hand over six years of information to a congressional committee that Trump had refused to make public.
Presidents of the United States are not compelled by law to disclose information about their personal finances, although every president since Richard Nixon has done so.
The congressional committee has the legal authority to make the results public, but the judge’s decision contained a warning against doing so.
“It may not be ethical or smart to disclose the returns,” McFadden said, “but it is the Chairman’s prerogative to do so.”
“Congress has given him this exceptional power, and courts are wary of interfering with congressional motives or laws that have been legally enacted. The Court will not do so in this case, and the case must be dismissed.” “he stated
