Congress Isn’t ‘Smart Enough’: WH Implies Trump May Order IRS To Withhold Tax Docs

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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave no assurance Sunday that President Donald Trump would stay out of the ongoing battle between the IRS and Democrats in Congress over access to Trump’s tax returns. Sanders also jabbed at members of Congress, saying they weren’t “smart enough” to analyze the returns.

Democrats and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin — who’s made official statements on IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig’s behalf — have gone back and forth for weeks over the lawmakers’ request for Trump’s and several of his businesses’ tax returns.

On Saturday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) set a new deadline of April 23 for the returns, after Mnuchin said on the previous deadline, April 10, that an analysis of the request was ongoing. Later Saturday, Mnuchin accused Democrats of “weaponizing” the IRS.

In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked Sanders whether Trump would “demand that the IRS not turn over his tax returns” or, rather, “live with whatever the IRS decides.”

Sanders responded by repeating an irrelevant line from Trump, saying that as long as the President’s taxes are supposedly under audit, he will not release his returns. (Trump has never shown proof that he is under audit, and even if he is, he can still release his tax returns.)

Wallace pressed: “Will he tell the IRS not to release them though?”

“We’ll have to see what happens on that front,” Sanders replied, not ruling out the possibility.

She added later: “Frankly, Chris, I don’t think Congress, particularly not this group of congressmen and -women, are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump’s taxes will be.”

“My guess is most of them don’t do their own taxes, and I certainly don’t trust them to look through the decades of success that the President has and determine anything.”

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Notable Replies

  1. Trump will simply tell the IRS not to comply, and Democrats will have to be willing to push the point to its logical conclusion; the President will be in direct contradiction to Federal law that he swore an oath to uphold, and will have to be impeached. None of this should surprise anyone, since Trump’s history as a businessman shows that he flaunts his disavowal of his own word and dares anyone to take him on when he breaks his contracts. He’s a bully and a thug in the truest sense of the word, and Congress will have no choice but to observe THEIR Constitutional duties and impeach him for his refusal to obey the law.

    Then it will be up to Republicans to show whether they really believe that the Constitution applies to them or not.

  2. Avatar for drtv drtv says:

    Well, Dumbass SHS, if they aren’t smart enough (they are…), they are certainly smart enough to have a team of forensic accountants on hand to do that work for them.

  3. These people personify the term, “unmitigated gall.”

  4. Does she know how Congress works? I know she is not this stupid. It is highly likely that a forensic account was hired by Congress to evaluate the returns -line by frickin’ line.

  5. Avatar for pine pine says:

    “Congress Isn’t ‘Smart Enough”

    "The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

    Alan Kay"

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