US elected officials voted on Tuesday evening to support the publication of the tax returns of former Republican President Donald Trump, who fought a legal battle for several years to keep them private.
Before the vote, elected Democrats had not ruled out making these statements immediately public upon approval, but the exact date of publication was not yet known immediately after the vote.
Donald Trump, who is in a new race for the White House for 2024, had not made his tax declarations public, unlike all his predecessors since the 1970s, which has raised many questions on their content.
A committee of the House of Representatives, which deals in particular with tax matters and which has a Democratic majority until the installation of the new Republican majority, i.e. until January, voted 24 votes in favor and 16 votes against the publication. billionaire’s tax slips for six years, from 2015 to 2020.
This group of elected officials had been demanding for three years the documents sent to the tax authorities by the billionaire during this period, which he refused. The Supreme Court finally ruled in his favor at the end of November.
Only a handful of elected officials have so far been able to read it.
Financial fraud
The lack of transparency of Donald Trump, who has made his wealth a campaign argument, has fueled speculation for years about the extent of his fortune or potential conflicts of interest.
His family business, 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 was not tried.
Kevin Brady, Republican elected to the commission, said before the vote that a possible publication would “open the door” for parliamentarians “to have almost unlimited powers to attack their political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns.
“Even if the Democrats assure that it is not political, continued a press release from the elected Republicans, their eagerness to publish the documents in an accelerated, sloppy process, shows that their motivations are indeed political. »