White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Sunday that she doesn't believe members of Congress are "smart enough" to examine President Donald Trump's tax returns, pushing back against Democrats' demands for information on the president's finances.
House Democrats have given the Trump administration a hard deadline of April 23 to turn over the president's tax returns, arguing that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's concerns about the request "lack merit."
In an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Sanders said that Democrats were treading a "dangerous road" and that their request for Trump's tax returns is "all about political partisanship."
"Frankly, Chris, I don't think Congress -- particularly not this group of congressmen and women -- are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump's taxes will be," Sanders said. "My guess is most of them don't do their own taxes, and I certainly don't trust them to look through the decades of success that the president has and determine anything."
She added that the Democratic effort puts "every American" in jeopardy.
"If they can single out one, they can single out everybody," she said.
Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign, breaking decades of precedent under which candidates for the White House voluntarily released their returns. Trump claimed it wouldn't make sense to release his tax returns while, he said, they are under audit.
The IRS says an audit doesn't bar public release.
The president has also claimed the filings are too complex for people to understand.
Information for this article was contributed by Jeff Stein of The Washington Post and by The Associated Press.
A Section on 04/15/2019