U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, this afternoon joined with colleagues on the House Ways and Means Committee to vote in favor of releasing Donald Trump’s business and personal tax records to the full House and to the public. The documents were obtained pursuant to a legal request by Chairman Richard Neal that was obstructed in the courts for 1,329 days.

“Today our committee voted to uphold sunlight and democracy,” said Chairman Pascrell. “For six long years we fought to release these documents because Americans deserve to know if their chief executive is compromised. But today’s victory is bigger than one crooked man or party. This is a triumph for idea that no one person is above the law. Congress is the Article I branch. Our power to oversee the executive is broad. That power was illegally stymied by Trump and his adjutants for years. All Americans should be proud of our actions today to uphold transparency and fairness.

“I categorically reject Republicans’ bad faith attacks on our action today. The only abuse of Section 6103 comes from Republicans themselves. Back in 2014, Committee Republicans voted to make public the private tax information of 51 taxpayers as part of a Republican witch hunt. Republicans’ lies and hypocrisies know no bounds. Republicans’ threats to use the tax code against their political enemies next year is repugnant and shows that the GOP can’t be trusted to administer our tax laws fairly.”

Rep. Pascrell has been the most vocal proponent of the Congress reviewing Donald Trump’s tax returns. Since February 2017, Pascrell has led the call for the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means to invoke Section 6103 of the tax code to obtain Trump’s tax returns. In the 115th Congress, Republicans voted 18 times to block Democratic resolutions seeking the tax returns. Pascrell had a fiery exchange in March 2020 with disgraced former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for his illegal refusal to provide Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.