Grassley wants to see Trump’s tax returns

WASHINGTON — One of the few Republicans with the power to request President Donald Trump’s tax returns wants to make sure that if House Democrats are successful in getting them, he wants to see them too.

“If the House of Representatives gets them, I want the Senate Finance Committee to get them,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s chairman, told reporters Wednesday.

Grassley is one of the few members of Congress, as the head of the Senate tax-writing committee, who has the authority to view the returns of any taxpayer, including the president’s. His counterpart in the House, Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is moving toward asking the U.S. Treasury Department to hand over Trump’s tax documents.

Neal has declined to give a timetable for when he will submit his request, but Rep. Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat, says his “gut feeling” is that the Ways and Means Committee is about two weeks away from sending the formal inquiry to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Grassley’s wish to see any tax documents that Treasury hands over to the Democrats foreshadows preparations on both sides for the partisan battle that would likely ensue if the documents became public.

Democrats say they are demanding Trump’s returns to investigate whether he has complied with tax laws, to examine his business dealings overseas and to figure out who his debtors are.