President Trump can keep his elusive tax returns under wraps — for now — with the collapse of House Democrats’ latest attempt to make them public.
The Treasury Department’s top watchdog ruled that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin acted correctly when he withheld six years’ worth of Trump’s IRS filings from prying eyes on the House Ways and Means Committee.
“The Department processed the request properly,” acting Inspector General Richard Delmar wrote to committee chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) in a letter made public Friday.
Delmar, who investigated the matter at Neal’s request, found that Mnuchin followed the advice of Justice Department attorneys to keep Trump’s financial documents private.
Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee claim they need the tax returns to conduct oversight over the IRS as they consider bills on the auditing of future presidents — and have sued in federal court to obtain them.
But the Trump administration calls that a flimsy pretext, saying that the Democrats merely want to make his business affairs public.
Trump, unlike past presidents and presidential candidates, has never publicly released any of his tax returns, saying since 2015 that he could not do so because they have been under audit.