WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, made the following comment after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel reversed its prior opinion urging the Treasury Department denial of House Democrats’ request for former President Trump’s tax returns.  
 
“The federal government closely guards private taxpayer information for a reason. It seems to me that this new opinion from the Biden Justice Department is just politics. The Office of Legal Counsel is supposed to be a source of thoughtful legal analysis, not a source of political justifications to back up partisan House investigations. Troublingly, this new OLC opinion contradicts its own very recent opinion.  
 
“The process Treasury undertook to vet this request for private tax information was proper. The career, non-partisan watchdog affirmed that last year. There’s no legitimate legislative purpose for targeting an individual’s tax information like this, even if it’s the former president. It’s always been obvious that House Democrats wanted to get the former president’s tax returns just so they could release them to the public, and the Ways and Means Committee’s excuse about doing oversight on the presidential audit program is an obvious pretext that deserves no deference from the Treasury Department. It doesn’t matter who it is, such a partisan and targeted abuse of private taxpayer information is a very dangerous precedent that will damage our country.”  
 
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