The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald Trump during the first two years of his presidency, a Democratic-controlled House committee said Tuesday. The committee's probe said it found that only one audit was started while Trump was in office and no audits were completed.
The findings were announced after the House Ways and Means Committee voted earlier Tuesday to release a report related to Trump's tax returns. The report covers 2015 through 2020 of the former president's tax filings.
"The Committee expected that these mandatory audits were being conducted promptly and in accordance with IRS policies," Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said in a statement. "However, our review found that under the prior administration, the program was dormant. We know now, the first mandatory audit was opened two years into his presidency. On the same day this Committee requested his returns."
In a vote split along party lines, the Democrats on the panel voted in support of the release while Republicans voted against the measure.
Whether or not to release the former president's tax records has become a point of contention, with Republicans arguing that doing so would set a dangerous precedent.
Democrats on the panel had argued that the president's tax returns were necessary for the panel to evaluate the IRS's presidential audit program. In response, Trump filed an emergency application on Oct. 31 to block the release. But the the Supreme Court denied Trump's request to block the committee's request, clearing the way for the records to be released.
"We anticipated the IRS would expand the mandatory audit program to account for the complex nature of the former president's financial situation yet found no evidence of that," Neal said. "This is a major failure of the IRS under the prior administration, and certainly not what we had hope to find."
Democrats' fight for Trump's tax returns on a legal front have been ongoing for more than three years, beginning in 2019.
Neal had requested the IRS turn over then-President Trump's tax returns spanning 2013 to 2018, but was denied by the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS. The department said the request was not supported by a legitimate legislative purpose, NPR previously reported, and was "pretextual."
The ranking Republican on Ways and Means, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, asked committee Democrats to reconsider before the issue was brought to a vote.
"We urge Democrats to turn back while they still can. If they release tax returns today it will be a stain on this committee," Brady told reporters.
Brady also stated that releasing the returns would unleash a new weapon for partisan politicians who would use tax filings against the opposition.
"Ways and Means Democrats are unleashing a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond President Trump, and jeopardizes the privacy of every American," Brady said in a statement last week. "Going forward, partisans in Congress have nearly unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns to embarrass and destroy them."
Brady added that releasing confidential records wouldn't be limited to public officials, but potentially private citizens, businesses, labor leaders and even Supreme Court justices.
Neal said, following the vote, "This was not about being punitive, it was not about being malicious."
NPR's Halimah Abdullah contributed to this report.
