WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump faces double blows on the legal and political front next week as one House panel votes on whether to recommend criminal charges against him and another considers making his tax records public.
The expected actions by both committees, which are the culmination of lengthy investigations into the former president, come just two weeks before Democrats relinquish the House majority — and their oversight authority — to Republicans.
The bad news for Trump begins Monday at the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, which will vote on recommendations that he face prosecution for obstructing an official government proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The next day, the House Ways and Means Committee will decide what to do with six years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns, including whether the documents will be released to the public.
This all comes as Trump’s third bid for the White House has some Republican leaders searching for alternatives in the wake of an unexpectedly poor midterm election and the former president’s slipping poll numbers. Trump-aligned candidates in key battleground states lost in the midterms, allowing Democrats to expand their Senate majority and limiting Republican gains in the House.
A Trump spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, who acquired access to Trump’s tax returns after a three-year court battle, hasn’t given any details about his plans. But the panel needs only a simple majority vote to release Trump’s returns. Democrats hold an eight-seat advantage on the committee.
At the Tuesday meeting, lawmakers will discuss what the documents contain, and may decide whether the information is enough to justify releasing them publicly. The hearing will begin in open session, but lawmakers can then vote to close it to the public.
The tax code permits the chairmen of the congressional tax committees to request the returns of any taxpayer, including the president.
Trump promised to release his tax returns as a candidate but later reversed, becoming the first president in decades to withhold them, insisting he couldn’t make them public because he was being audited.
Neal first requested Trump’s taxes in 2019 but only got the Supreme Court’s go-ahead to obtain documents from the agency last month. Neal initially requested the tax records and any accompanying documents, saying he needed to review how the IRS audits the taxes of U.S. presidents.
Neal and his fellow committee members have been tight-lipped about what documents are included, and whether they would release some or all of what was obtained.
GOP members of the panel were also granted access to Trump’s tax documents. Rep. Kevin Brady, the committee’s top Republican, told reporters on Wednesday that Republicans have argued that giving access to the returns sets a dangerous precedent and gives future committees ability to target political enemies.
The panel could publicly release Trump’s information by opting to send the documents in full or summarizing the findings in a report to the full House. It did so in 2019, when Democrats voted to make documents related to former President Richard Nixon’s tax records public.
(Samantha Handler, Mario Parker and Billy House contributed to this report.)
