House committee votes to release Trump's tax returns

The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday voted to release former President Donald Trump's tax returns, ending a lengthy bid from Democrats to make public the 45th president's personal finances.

The committee voted on party lines and has not set a date for making the documents public, according to CNN. Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle said the public would first see a summary of the documents before getting them in their full forms.

"It'll be a summary of the returns but then also the returns themselves. That's what we just voted on," he told the outlet.

Prior to the vote, Texas GOP Rep. Kevin Brady, the party's leading member on the committee, expressed concern that a congressionally enforced public release of a private citizen's taxes could set a dangerous precedent for individual taxpayers.

The release of Trump's returns, he said, would create "a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president and overturns decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since the Watergate reform."

Trump had long sought to keep his personal finances private, opting against a public release during the campaign cycle, as was the established norm for would-be commanders-in-chief. Upon taking control of the House in the 2018 midterms, Democrats began a relentless push to secure the documents, which Trump himself and many Republicans have derided as a fishing operation and political hit job.

The Supreme Court in late November declined Trump's bid to block the release of his tax returns to the committee.