Trump and House committee still at loggerheads over tax records
Lawyers for Donald Trump and the House Oversight Committee revealed on Tuesday that they’re at a standstill in the Democrats’ long-running pursuit of tax records from Trump’s accounting firm Mazars USA.
“This has dragged on forever,” the House’s general counsel Douglas Letter said at a hearing Tuesday.
He and lawyers for Trump said there had been little negotiation over the Mazars subpoena, and the House feared Trump’s team would turn over even minimal records, if anything.
“There has never been any indication that any of the documents we’re seeking” would be turned over, Letter said. “Your Honor, we’ve done this over and over and over.”
The case is one among several still ongoing where the House has sought for years to unearth Trump’s financial information for several of its Democratic-led committees’ work. At one time, the case was the most swiftly moving effort for the House to obtain Trump’s tax returns, but following a round at the Supreme Court, it is no longer. The case also doesn’t have the x-factor of Biden administration involvement, which is affecting another lawsuit, where the House is seeking Trump’s tax returns directly from the IRS.
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Without a deal between the parties in the Mazars case, a judge would have to referee which documents the House might get.
“We could be seeing another extended period of negotiation before anyone sees another document,” Judge Amit Mehta said at Tuesday’s hearing.
Letter added that the House and Trump’s team have been negotiating in good faith on several cases where the House is pursuing financial records to investigate the ex-President.
