US lawmakers are due to vote on Tuesday to decide whether to make Donald Trump's tax returns public, a publication that would end years of a legal battle led by the former president to keep them private.
The Republican leader, who has embarked on a new race for the White House for 2024, had not made his tax slips known, unlike all his predecessors since the 1970s, raising many questions about their content.
Lack of transparency
A committee of the House of Representatives, sitting in particular on tax affairs and with a Democratic majority until the installation of the new Republican majority in early January, must vote behind closed doors on Tuesday afternoon on the publication or not of the tax declarations of Donald Trump.
This group of elected officials had been demanding for three years the documents sent to the tax authorities by the billionaire between 2015 and 2020, which he refused.
The Supreme Court finally ruled in their favor at the end of November.
Only a handful of elected officials have so far been able to read it.
The lack of transparency of Donald Trump, who has made his wealth a campaign argument, has fueled speculation for years about the extent of his fortune or potential conflicts of interest.
His family business, the Trump Organization, was found guilty in early December of financial and tax fraud after a trial in New York where the former Republican president was not tried.
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Kevin Brady, elected Republican on the commission, warned before the vote that a possible publication
would “open the door”
for parliamentarians
“to have almost unlimited powers to attack their political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax declarations.
“Even if the Democrats assure that it is not political”
, continues a press release from the elected Republicans,
“their eagerness to publish the documents with an accelerated, sloppy process, shows that their motivations are indeed political”,
they add.
The elected Democrats have not ruled out immediately making these tax sheets public after the vote on Tuesday, if it were to be positive.