Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells Fox News' Chris Wallace that Trump may order the IRS to refuse Congress on his tax returns

Sarah Huckabee Sanders talks with Chris Wallace
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Fox News)

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) has asked for six years of President Trump's personal and business tax returns by April 23, using a law that doesn't give Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin much wiggle room. On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders if Trump will "tell the IRS not to release them?" "We'll have to see what happened on that front," Sanders said.

Sanders repeated the argument from Trump's lawyers and Mnuchin that Neal's stated policy purpose for seeking Trump's tax returns is insufficient or purely partisan, claiming "the only reason that the oversight committee has the ability to request someone's taxes are for the purpose of determining policy." (Whether Neal needs a policy purpose is a question that hasn't been answered by the courts, though the 1924 tax law in question was enacted in response to the Harding administration's Teapot Dome scandal and most legal experts agree Neal's purpose would pass the legal threshold in any case.)

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.