Trump encourages supporters to dismiss news about his taxes

After a rant attacking Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), former President Donald Trump told his supporters that they should ignore news about his taxes.

It's been mere weeks since Trump's companies were found guilty of 17 counts of fraud, and his longtime accountant is headed to prison. Congress has fought for years to get ahold of Trump's business information as part of the House Reform and Oversight's investigation into any possible emoluments violations. They've been given documents from the Trump Org. hotel in Washington, D.C., that revealed some of the profits the president scored from foreign governments on and around major points in policy moves by the White House.

The tax information requested in this case, however, is part of a probe by the House Ways and Means Committee. In their Tuesday meeting, the committee will vote on whether to make the six years of tax records public, as an act of transparency.

“Nearly four years ago, the Ways and Means Committee set out to fulfill our legislative and oversight responsibilities, and evaluate the Internal Revenue Service’s mandatory audit program,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) in a statement. “As affirmed by the Supreme Court, the law was on our side, and on Tuesday, I will update the members of the committee.”

Trump spent most of the 2016 campaign saying that he was under an audit by the IRS and thus couldn't turn over his taxes. Nothing in the IRS's law says that he couldn't reveal his financial information. All presidents in modern history have revealed their taxes to voters to demonstrate transparency. Trump refused, even after the audit was over.

Now that the former president has lost almost all of his appeals and his attempt at a "stay," the information is being sent to the House committee. It's unclear how swiftly the documents will be leaked, but Trump believes that they'll be publicly posted. He encouraged his supporters to dismiss the information because there wouldn't be that much information in them. After claiming they were no big deal he threatened that it was illegal to release them.

"You can’t learn much from tax returns, but it is illegal to release them if they are not yours!" Trump wrote on his social media site.