Insider
Congressman says Donald Trump ‘abused his power’ to hide his finances on a scale not seen since Nixon
Rebecca Cohen – December 30, 2022
- Rep. Don Beyer said Donald Trump “abused his power” to hide his finances.
- The Democrat compared Trump’s attempts to “block basic transparency” to Richard Nixon.
- A House committee published six years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns on Friday after a years-long legal fight.
A Democratic congressman compared former President Donald Trump to Richard Nixon, saying Trump “abused his power” to hide his finances from the public.
“Despite promising to release his tax returns, Donald Trump refused to do so, and abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflicts of interest which no president since Nixon has foregone,” Democratic Virginia Rep. Don Beyer said in a statement Friday.
Six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns were released by the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.
Beyer accused the former president of having “something to hide” as he refused to release tax documents as presidents since Nixon had done and fought Congress’ attempts to access them.
“As the public will now be able to see,” Beyer continued, “Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined.”
Beyer noted that tax laws in the US are “often inequitable, and that enforcement of them is often unjust.”
“Trump was able to bypass even the mandatory IRS presidential audit program for years, but many other wealthy and powerful people evade billions in tax dues every year through more quotidian tax avoidance. Congress has so much work to do to make tax enforcement in this country fairer, and that will continue to be a major priority for me as a member of the Ways and Means Committee going forward,” Beyer said.
The Ways and Means Committee voted on December 20 to release Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020 after a long legal battle in which none of the courts who heard the case — including the US Supreme Court — sided with Trump.
The returns revealed just how much Trump earned in each of those years, showing that the former president — who campaigned as a successful businessman and passed sweeping tax cuts while in office — told the IRS he lost millions in the years before and during his presidency.