Trump blasts Democrats, SC after House releases tax returns

Former President Donald Trump ripped Democratic lawmakers Friday for releasing several years of his tax returns, warning of dire consequences for the nation while touting his ability to avoid paying income taxes. “The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people. The great USA divide will now grow far worse,” Trump said in a statement issued shortly after House Democrats released six years of his personal and business tax returns.

A Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives committee released Trump's redacted returns for 2015 through 2020, capping a multi-year battle between the Republican former president and Democratic lawmakers that was settled only last month by the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump's tax data will now be available for in-depth investigations by journalists, independent tax experts and others during the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, and could shed light on Trump's wealth, his businesses' performance and how he reduced his tax liability. The nearly 6,000 pages of records include over 2,700 pages of personal returns from Trump and his wife Melania Trump, plus more than 3,000 pages of returns from his businesses.The records show that Trump's income and tax liability fluctuated dramatically from 2015 through 2020, during his first presidential bid and subsequent term in office. He and his wife claimed large deductions and losses, and paid little or no income tax in several of those years.

Trump, a businessman who held public office for the first time when he entered the White House in 2017, was the first presidential candidate in decades not to release his tax returns. He sued the committee to try to keep them private but the U.S. high court ruled in the committee's favor.In findings disclosed last week, the committee said the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service broke its own rules by not auditing Trump for three out of four years while he was president.