Congress can officially look at Trump’s New York state tax returns now

(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

published 8 July 2019

Congress will probably get to look at President Trump's tax returns one of these days.

As expected, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Monday signed a bill mandating that state tax officials release certain federal officials' tax returns if the House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Finance Committee, or Joint Committee on Taxation ask for them. The law goes into effect immediately, though lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are expecting legal challenges to hold up that process for at least a few months, The Associated Press reports.

The bill includes more public officials than just Trump, though the president was clearly the focus of the Democratic-led bill. While Cuomo declared in a statement that the new law "gives Congress the ability to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities," Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow boiled it down to "more presidential harassment," per The Wall Street Journal. Sekulow also suggested Trump would take action to fight requests for his state returns. That could come in the form of a lawsuit with an injunction that delays any documents' release.

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Then again, it's not even clear one of the committees will even ask for Trump's returns. Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has said he won't, though he'll ask for the returns if House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) does, the Journal reports. Yet Neal seems "more focused" on his request for six years of Trump's federal records and his committee's lawsuit against the Treasury Department for them, the Journal continues. After all, Neal has said before that he wouldn't ask for Trump's state returns because they'll reveal pretty much the same information as his federal records.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.