Fox News reports that Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett believes that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Charles Rettig and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin should be jailed for preventing Congress from obtaining President Donald Trump’s tax returns. The comment was made Tuesday to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night — just one day before the IRS released a legal memo suggesting that the president must release his returns if requested by Congress, as The Inquisitr reported.
“I believe that there is no legal advice that will stop the lawlessness and lies of this administration, and that is why Congress needs to act firmly now to use every tool it has available to get this information that Trump so fears that the public will see.”
The American attorney suggests that the only way to make Rettig and Mnuchin release the president’s financial information is to use fines or legal confinement. Although he said Rettig, in particular, should be targeted since the subpoena is directed at him, he suggests that Mnuchin should be targeted as well as he is the one refusing to let Rettig answer any questions directed at him.
But Doggett added that many people are refusing to comply with Congress, including former White House counsel Don McGahn and Attorney General William Barr.
“It’s probably a matter of selecting one of them and moving forward to show how this power of inherent contempt could work.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett: “I think that both [Secretary Mnuchin & IRS Commissioner Rettig] could be subject to fines or confinement … It’s probably a matter of selecting one of them and moving forward to show how this power of inherent contempt could work.” https://t.co/lGt5eYAcHy
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 22, 2019
Congressional Democrats have already threatened to take legal action against Barr after he defied a subpoena and refused to release an unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, and recommended a contempt citation against him. In addition, they threatened legal action against McGahn for defying a subpoena to ordered him to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.
On Monday, Doggett made news when he praised Representative Justin Amash for acknowledging that Trump committed “impeachable conduct” on Saturday — the first Republican to do so, as The Inquisitr reported — and asked Democrats to show the same “courage.” Amash continued his criticism of Trump Monday on Twitter in a series of tweets in which he said that people claiming the president cannot have obstructed justice and cannot be impeached “are resting their argument on several falsehoods.”
Doggett made the comments supporting Amash on CNN’s Newsroom , and The Washington Times reports that he believes that he believes Democrats are “getting closer” to impeaching Trump but “still have a little more work” to do in terms of the investigation.
In response to the IRS memo, Mnuchin claims that it does not contradict his belief that Congress has no “legitimate legislative purpose” for obtaining Trump’s tax returns, and suggests that it addresses a “different issue.”
