Steve Engel Steven Engel, U.S. assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

The U.S. Treasury Department is acting lawfully in refusing to provide President Donald Trump's tax returns to House Democrats despite a federal law that says the government “shall furnish” any requested information about a private citizen, the Justice Department said in a new legal memo published Friday.

Federal law has long permitted the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee to inspect the tax returns of private individuals, and the law does not require congressional lawmakers to state a reason for wanting to review a citizen's tax records. But the Justice Department is arguing that Democrats have offered “pretextual” reasons for wanting to see Trump's records and that the Treasury secretary was not out of bounds to “close his eyes and blindly accept a pretextual justification for that request.”

“Congress could not constitutionally confer upon the committee the right to compel disclosure by the executive branch of confidential information that did not serve a legitimate legislative purpose,” the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel memo stated. “While the executive branch should accord due deference and respect to congressional requests, Treasury was not obliged to accept the committee's stated purpose without question, and based on all the facts and circumstances.”

Representatives from the House Ways and Means Committee did not immediately comment Friday about the DOJ legal memo.

The Treasury Department's refusal to provide Trump's tax returns marks the latest clash between the administration and House Democrats and could spur a new legal fight in Washington's federal trial court. Trump's lawyers already are fighting in two federal appeals courts now to block House committees from obtaining financial records from his accounting firm and two banks. Judges in Washington and New York have upheld subpoenas issued to financial institutions in Trump's orbit.

House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, first requested Trump's tax returns in April from Charles Rettig, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner.

“Consistent with its authority, the committee is considering legislative proposals and conducting oversight related to our federal tax laws, including, but not limited to, the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces federal tax laws against a president,” Neal wrote.

The Justice Department's memo, written by Steven Engel, the Senate-confirmed head of the Office of Legal Counsel, declared: “No one could reasonably believe that the committee seeks six years of President Trump's tax returns because of a newly discovered interest in legislating on the presidential-audit process.”

Engel said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin “quite reasonably, concluded that Chairman Neal had not articulated the real reason for his request. The chairman's request that Treasury turn over the president's tax returns, for the apparent purpose of making them public, amounted to an unprecedented use of the committee's authority and raised a serious risk of abuse.”

The Justice Department's new legal memo memorializes advice given to the U.S. Treasury Department, which had resisted, for weeks, disclosing the requested tax records of Trump and related business entities.

Mnuchin last month said in a letter to Congress that the Justice Department was preparing a legal memo on the dispute.

“In reliance on the advice of the Department of Justice, I have determined that the committee's request lacks a legitimate legislative purpose, and pursuant to section 6103, the department is therefore not authorized to disclose the requested returns and return information,” Mnuchin wrote in his letter on May 6.

Mnuchin said in his letter that the Ways and Means committee's request “is unprecedented, and it presents serious constitutional questions, the resolution of which may have lasting consequences for all taxpayers.”

Trump had vowed for months on the campaign trail that he wanted to release his tax returns but was facing an IRS audit. Tax professional said then that any pending audit would not have precluded Trump from releasing his returns, as presidential candidates have done for decades.

“I'm always audited by the IRS—which I think is very unfair,” Trump said after one Republican presidential debate. “I don't maybe because of religion or something else.” He added: I'm a strong Christian and I feel strongly about it—and maybe there's a bias. You have many religious groups that are complaining about that.”

 

The new OLC memo is posted below:

 

 

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