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Meanwhile, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) tried to squeeze in one last argument to obtain Trump's tax returns as lawmakers grow increasingly frustrated with his cautious approach. Neal, who drew a primary challenger this week — 30-year-old Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse — called an executive session to review documents Democrats released yesterday that show the Internal Revenue Service turned President Richard Nixon's tax returns over to a congressional committee on the same day that they were requested for review in 1973, per my colleague Jeff Stein. Point proven: “Section 6103 has been used to obtain the tax returns and return information of a sitting President,” Neal said in a letter to committee members, referring to the part of U.S. code that pertains to congressional requests for private taxpayer information. “Where records were available, the IRS complied . . . without delay or objection. “The Trump administration has made claims about [Neal’s request] being unprecedented. It is not unprecedented,” Joe Thorndike, a historian and policy analyst for Tax Notes, told Jeff. “We can argue about [Neal’s request] on the merits, but now we have established that this has been done before.” Reminder: “Neal has requested six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns, from 2013 to 2018, a period that includes several years before Trump became president. Neal recently sued the Trump administration in federal court to obtain the records, after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin argued in a May letter that Neal’s 'unprecedented request' should be denied.” Committee member Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) told Power Up that it's unclear what Neal's next steps will be other than waiting for things to play out in court. “My question is: why are [Republicans] so scared for people just to know that this has been done in the past using this particular rule?” Gomez said, referring to committee colleagues who apparently rushed out of Neal's briefing. “And that the IRS commissioner complied and responded?”

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