White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave no assurance Sunday that President Donald Trump would stay out of the ongoing battle between the IRS and Democrats in Congress over access to Trump’s tax returns. Sanders also jabbed at members of Congress, saying they weren’t “smart enough” to analyze the returns.
Democrats and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin — who’s made official statements on IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig’s behalf — have gone back and forth for weeks over the lawmakers’ request for Trump’s and several of his businesses’ tax returns.
On Saturday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) set a new deadline of April 23 for the returns, after Mnuchin said on the previous deadline, April 10, that an analysis of the request was ongoing. Later Saturday, Mnuchin accused Democrats of “weaponizing” the IRS.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked Sanders whether Trump would “demand that the IRS not turn over his tax returns” or, rather, “live with whatever the IRS decides.”
Sanders responded by repeating an irrelevant line from Trump, saying that as long as the President’s taxes are supposedly under audit, he will not release his returns. (Trump has never shown proof that he is under audit, and even if he is, he can still release his tax returns.)
Wallace pressed: “Will he tell the IRS not to release them though?”
“We’ll have to see what happens on that front,” Sanders replied, not ruling out the possibility.
She added later: “Frankly, Chris, I don’t think Congress, particularly not this group of congressmen and -women, are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump’s taxes will be.”
“My guess is most of them don’t do their own taxes, and I certainly don’t trust them to look through the decades of success that the President has and determine anything.”
Watch below:
Chris asks @PressSec if the President will tell the IRS not to release his tax returns #FNS pic.twitter.com/RBaVniYMKj
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) April 14, 2019
