It’s another defeat for Donald Trump: the former US President is coming under increasing pressure not only because of the investigation into the storming of the Capitol, but now also because of his tax matters. The US Congressional Finance Committee has decided to release several of the ex-President’s documents. This means that theoretically every US citizen can view the Republican’s documents.
For years, Trump had used legal means to prevent the papers from being released. But at the end of November he finally failed before the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had dismissed a request by its attorneys to stop the transmission of tax documents to the Treasury Committee in the House of Representatives.
The committee, on which the Democrats still have a majority, rushed to bring about the decision before the seat distribution in the House of Representatives changes in January and with it the chairmanship of the committee.
Contrary to usual practice in the United States, Trump did not make his tax returns public either as a presidential candidate or after moving into the White House. Critics therefore suspect that the Republican has something to hide. The Democrats want to examine whether the documents show Trump’s conflicts of interest between his role as an entrepreneur and his role as a politician. They also suspect that Trump has used questionable methods to save taxes.
For example, in a tax fraud case against two of the former president’s companies, Trump Payroll Corporation and Trump Corporation, his chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, testified that Trump reported about $900 million in operating losses over two years. Trump was not personally accused in the process. the New York Times had already published research in 2020 according to which Trump had not paid any income tax in ten of the past 15 years because he said he had lost more money than he had earned.
In mid-November, Trump announced that he would run again as the Republican presidential candidate in the 2024 election. Should the tax documents contain relevant information, this could also harm the Republican in the election campaign.