House oversight committee subpoenas Trump’s tax records
The new subpoena replaces the one sent earlier that expired in January with the new administration
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Your support makes all the difference.The House Oversight Committee has reissued a subpoena to Donald Trump’s accounting firm, House counsel Doug Letter said in a filing on Tuesday, for information which is likely to include the former president’s tax returns.
Investigators are working to get eight years of Mr Trump’s tax records from the accounting firm Mazars USA. The Supreme Court recently refused to block a request for access to the tax returns from prosecutors as part of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney.
In a joint status report, House attorneys attached a copy of the subpoena that was served to Mazars last week on 25 February, demanding financial documents related to MrTrump, the Trump Organisation, the Trump Foundation and other related entities by 11 March.
The new subpoena was issued in place of a similar subpoena from 2019, which expired in January when new US lawmakers took office. It demands “all statements of financial condition, annual statements, periodic financial reports and independent auditors’ reports” from 2011 to 2018, as well as “all documents and communications relating to their preparation”.
However, the documents that the House committee receives from Mr Trump’s longtime accounting firm will not be made public as part of the process.
Tuesday’s court filing included a 23 February memorandum from the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Carolyn Maloney, explaining the decision to reissue the subpoena.
“For more than 22 months, the Committee has been denied key information needed to inform legislative action to address the once-in-a-generation ethics crisis created by former President Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest,” Chairwoman Maloney wrote in her memo.
“The Committee’s need for this information… remains just as compelling now as it was when the Committee first issued its subpoena, and the Committee’s legislative efforts remain just as critical to the American people as they were before President Trump vacated the White House on 20 January, 2021,” she said.
For the past five years, Mr Trump has refused to release his tax returns and other documents that could provide details on his wealth, and has gone to great lengths to try and keep them a secret.
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