'Extraordinary measures' were justified to overcome Trump's 'unprecedented' refusal to release taxes: House Dem

In an interview with Raw Story, Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) defended the House Ways and Means Committee's vote to release redacted information on former President Donald Trump's taxes.

In response to criticism from Republicans that Democrats were using "unprecedented" measures to release information on the former president's taxes, Kildee argued that such measures were needed given Trump's total refusal to provide the American public with any information about his finances.

"If there's something that's unprecedented, it's the experience we've had under the era of Donald Trump," he said. "It requires, sometimes, some extraordinary measures to overcome such a character in our history. This is a person who broke precedent with our history by not releasing his tax returns."

He then threw his Republican colleagues' rhetoric back at them by noting all the times that they had brushed off instances of Trump breaking long-held norms.

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"If the Republicans want to have a conversation about the unprecedented nature of the last several years, this is not the place to start with," he said. "He did everything he could during his time running for office and standing in office to continue to obscure himself from public scrutiny."

Kildee also said that the Internal Revenue Service had failed to even meet the "minimum requirements" when it came to closely scrutinizing Trump's finances.