This Is Still Happening: Steven Mnuchin

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/steven-mnuchin-trump-corruption-still-happening.html
"What Is Still Happening: Mnuchin has been implicated in many, many, many scandals—big, medium, and small—since President Donald Trump first nominated the former Goldman Sachs chief information officer, hedge fund manager, foreclosure specialist, and film executive to be secretary of the treasury. He has been most recently in the news not for any of that early-term malfeasance, but for his current and ongoing efforts to cover up Trump’s tax returns. In April, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal issued a formal request to the Internal Revenue Service for Trump’s tax returns under a 1924 update to the tax code, which commanded that “upon written request” from the chairmen of the relevant committees, the Treasury “Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request.” Mnuchin, fulfilling an earlier promise to defy any such request, responded in May that he would not be furnishing the tax returns as the statute obligated. This came after Mnuchin acknowledged that his department had communicated with the White House about how it should handle the issue. As the Washington Post noted, the tax request “process is designed to be walled off from White House interference, in part because of corruption that took place during the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s.” Oh, well! In his response to Neal, Mnuchin argued that he could ignore both the spirit and the letter of the law, making an unsupported claim that the request for tax information “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose.” Even though the law says that “the Secretary shall furnish” the requested tax information, no questions asked, Neal had offered a legitimate legislative purpose for the request, namely to ensure that IRS policies subjecting presidential tax returns to “mandatory examinations” were being carried out properly."