Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every day we bring you insight and analysis into the most important legal news of the day. You can find more episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Laura Davison is Bloomberg News tax reporters. She's got She's covered the tax angle and President Trump's taxes from virtually every which angle, from Deutsche Bank to all of the other large financial institutions.
Her latest story on the Bloomberg Terminal. The Bloomberg Terminal says Manutian rejects House Democrats demand for Trump's tax returns. I mean surprising no one, right, Laura, No, No, certainly, we we knew this was coming pretty much from when a month ago, when Neil first made this request, Neil being the richie Neil of the Chairman of Ways and Means Committee. There's been a polite back and forth, a series of letters, and now we're sort of entering this
new phase. Manutian has said no, a uh, not gonna hand these over, and now it's really up to Kneel of you know, does he Sue does the issue with subpoena, and then that of almost of course, is going to go to the courts and play out over several months of not years. Laura Davison is Bloomberg News tax reporter. I love how you characterized that there's been these polite letters. It's only in Washington where the president tweets whatever he wants.
Lawmakers go on cable and say whatever they want. But then they have this like very formal, this formality of like correspondence where they send these letters back and forth. It's like just pick up the phone. But it is interesting because no one, no one, not even Democrats, thought that the president was gonna say, okay, you guys asked here, here are my tax returns. I only campaign and won a presidential election without releasing them. So now all of
a sudden, I'm going to change my mind. What is this really about? Surely Democrats don't think that he's just going to hand over his tax returns. Why are they being so persistent. Well, for one, they have a lot of pressure from their base saying look, you know, we
need to see what's going going on. We need to see how he's earning money from the Trump hotel, from all of US businesses that he hasn't fully relinquished control of, and so they've kind of got themselves locked into this this angle right now that there is still some skepticism from Democrats. Know, even Neil who's been in charge of this whole process, has been very deliberate, very slow moving, wanted to make sure he had all his legal angles
tied up. And I think there's some concern, you know, with all of the different investigations into the president, that Democrats look like they're overreaching. So this is the balance
that Pelosi is always trying to manage of. You know, how are we you know, showing that we're putting pressure on the president and and and appealing to to Democratic voters that are really fired up, but also you know, not turning away some of those voters that were in the middle that they're going to want to pick up.
Is remarkable. I mean, it truly is remarkable. And I think so often we lose sight of why there was a time when Republicans we're calling for the release of of folks tax returns, including private citizen Donald Trump when he was running for president, but but also for Democrats, and the issue really here is is to make sure that our elected leaders correct me if I'm wrong. Law to make sure that our elected leaders aren't beholden to any foreign companies or foreign governments. And that is why
people want the tax tax returns, right. I mean, it really has a less to do with who's occupying a position of power and more to just say, Okay, you know this government had this investment, so maybe they have this year, So why not just have a law that says that they that they would get financial clearance from the intelligence community as opposed to just pestering for these and hammering for these tax returns. That's certainly one one
way that they could go about it. You know, Democrats have been really focused on this you know, oversight bill that they want to work on that that would require a release of ten years of tax returns. But there's a lot of different ways you could you could skin this cat in terms of making sure that that people who are you know, in positions of power, occupying the White House, you know, are not beholden to any foreign government or or have you know, lots of debt that
would behold them to some specific business interest. I think that the thing here that Democrats are really focusing on is you know, we want the public to see and that the voters can see for themselves, and then they're not just you know, taking it from from some other source.
You know. Yesterday on our other Bloomberg radio show, sound on UH, we were talking with the Republican and Democratic strategists and how Democrats are really just trying to paint this picture of a culture of corruption and that corruption message is what they're hoping will fuel them into the next cycle. And Republicans, as you mentioned, large, say bring it on, because we're gonna say we're gonna fight back
and say that you're overreaching. So it's it's it is interesting to see how these data points all aligned into the picture of I think most Americans and either party are saying that's how business gets done in Washington, regardless of the political party. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg m HM.