US lawmakers voted Tuesday to release the tax returns of former Republican President Donald Trump, who has fought a years-long legal battle to keep them private. Before the vote, the Democrats-elect had not ruled out making these tax sheets public immediately after approval, but the exact date of publication immediately after the vote was not yet known.
Donald Trump, who has embarked on a new run for the White House by 2024, had not released his tax returns, unlike all his predecessors since the 1970s, raising many questions about their content.
A committee of the House of Representatives, dedicated in particular to fiscal matters and with a Democratic majority until the installation of the new Republican majority in early January, voted 24 votes in favor and 16 against in favor of the publication of the six years of the multimillionaire. tax sheets between 2015 and 2020.
This group of elected officials had been demanding for three years the documents sent to the Treasury by the billionaire between these years, to which he refused. The Supreme Court finally ruled in his favor at the end of November.
So far, only a handful of elected officials have been able to read it.
Speculations about possible conflicts of interest
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 possible 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, a Republican-elect on the committee, had warned before the vote that a possible publication would “open the door” for lawmakers “to have almost unlimited powers to attack their political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns.”
Source: BFM TV
