Maddow explains how Trump's attempt to keep his tax returns under wraps is crumbling

President Donald Trump's desperate quest to keep his tax returns hidden from the American public, even as House Democrats invoke federal law to demand the Treasury turn them over is failing, said MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Tuesday evening.

"We got another crack in the dam in another part of the Trump Administration," said Maddow. "This happened last night when someone leaked to the Washington Post the internal legal guidance that had been prepared at the IRS, making sure that the IRS itself knows that under law it must hand over President Trump's tax returns to the Ways and Means Committee. The IRS' own legal analysis says this is not a discretionary thing. This is not a judgment call for the treasury secretary or for anyone else. There is no wiggle room here. This is mandatory."

Maddow noted that the memo "has not yet resulted in the IRS actually handing over the president's tax returns, as required by law," but "the IRS and the Treasury Department are now defying a subpoena to hand over those tax returns. That means their defiance of that subpoena will soon land them in court. It will not help them in court that the agency itself turns out to have put in writing that they know they need to hand over those tax returns. I mean, incidentally it will not help them that there are people inside the IRS who are willing to provide that kind of utterly damning material to reporters in order to blow the whistle on their own bosses."

"And meanwhile, the dam is still cracking, including in new and exciting places," said Maddow. "Today in Albany, New York, the state legislature in the state where the president lived his whole life and where he headquartered his business interests, today the state legislature in New York voted that they would provide the president's state tax returns to Congress if the tax-related committees in Congress believe they need to see them."

"Now there is no sign yet that the Democrats in Congress will take up this offer from New York state, which is offering to give them the president's state tax returns," Maddow continued. "But if the Democrats in Congress do ultimately decide to go that route, it is expected that those state tax returns would likely contain much of the same information as the president's federal tax returns, which he is fighting so hard to keep secret."

"And all that has happened in less than two weeks," Maddow added. "And it's just the start."

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