DES MOINES – Senator Chuck Grassley of R. Iowa said Wednesday that he became involved in how the New York Times had gained access to President Donald Trump’s tax data, and introduced a law to maintain the confidentiality of tax data.
“This data has never been disseminated, and anyone who disseminated it violated the law,” Said Grassley, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, at a conference call with journalists in Iowa.
The New York Times, in a report released Sunday night, said its reporters had received and analyzed tax return information from Trump and his corporations for more than two decades. The Times is in the process of publishing more reports, which have so far shown that Trump had suffered large monetary losses in his career and had had small federal tax bills.
The Times reported that all the data it received “went through resources with legal access. “
Trump has long refused to publish his tax returns, saying he is under control. He brazened the Times articles as “fake news,” but did not agree to publish his statements to disprove the information.
Grassley noted on Wednesday Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, which governs the confidentiality and disclosure of tax and data returns through the Internal Revenue Service, saying it would be involved in how the data was sent to The Times.
When asked about the substance of the Times reports, Grassley said he did not have sufficient evidence. The senator noted Trump’s claims that he paid “millions of dollars” in income taxes, up from $750 a year in 2016 and 2017 reported through the Times.
“All I have is the president who says he paid millions of dollars in taxes, and the New York Times prints what he thinks, and we don’t have the facts to pass judgment,” Grassley said. “But let me tell you that I would be very involved in how this happened.
Grassley said earlier in the week that he also became involved in why the Internal Revenue Service took so long to complete its audit of Trump’s taxes. He said Wednesday that he was sure the IRS would “end up doing its job. “
“If you owe taxes, you’re going to pay them,” he said, “because there’s nothing safer, as you’ve heard many times, in this world than death and taxes. “
The Times did publish the tax documents on its own. Editor-in-chief Dean Baquet said in an email from the editor that the Times does publish the documents because it needs to compromise its sources.
Baquet also wrote that the Supreme Court “has ruled that the First Amendment allows the press to publish data of journalistic interest that has been legally received through journalists, even when current ones struggle to hide it. “
Ian Richardson covers the Iowa Statehouse for the Des Moines registry. Contact him at irichardson@registermedia. com, 515-284-8254, or on Twitter at @DMRIanR.
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