SPRINGFIELD — Tom Steyer, a hedge fund manager and billionaire behind the Need to Impeach campaign, called on U.S. Rep. Richard Neal Tuesday to use his power as the House Ways and Means Committee chairman to immediately request President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Steyer had been set to take his case for Trump’s impeachment directly to Springfield voters at a Tuesday night town hall, but the event was canceled due to inclement weather.
He told The Republican’s editorial board Tuesday afternoon that he did not understand why Neal has yet to formally seek the president’s tax information.
He argued that Neal should have set to work to request Trump’s tax returns after the 2018 election.
“Why are we not doing the right thing? What is hard about requesting taxes? What is the careful thing that takes more than three and a half months of legal time?” he said, contending that efforts to make the president’s tax documents public are in America’s national interest.
Steyer said Neal and other Democrats’ failure to take steps toward Trump’s impeachment since they took over the U.S. House in January suggests “there’s something else going on here.”
“If we’re actually going to impeach this president, we have to get this show on the road. If what we’re going to do is stretch this out, and push everything out ... I can do the math and pretty soon, with overwhelming likelihood we will hear from the Democratic leadership (that) it’s too close to the election,” he said.
Neal rejected Steyer’s call for him to speed up his efforts to request Trump’s tax information, as well as the Need to Impeach campaign’s push for Democrats to immediately move toward removing the president from office.
“I think the better answer there is that you have to wait and see where the evidence accumulates. Clearly the other part of it is, you have to wait for the Mueller report,” Neal said in an interview, alluding to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.
Neal, who officially took over as Ways and Means chairman in January, added that any request for Trump’s tax returns must be done “thoughtfully, methodically and judiciously.”
“If you lose a court case because of shoddy research, the same people who said you were not going fast enough will say that you were going too fast,” he said.
The congressman told The Republican’s editorial board in January that attorneys for the U.S. House and the Ways and Means Committee were preparing their case to request the president’s tax documents.
Need to Impeach said its Springfield town hall will be rescheduled, likely in early March.
The national grassroots campaign, which Steyer started in October 2017, recently launched television and digital ads targeting Neal.
The Republican National Committee released a statement critical of Need to Impeach ahead of the planned event Tuesday:
“Democratic activist Tom Steyer is nothing more than a California mega-donor who’s more concerned about his own special interests than fighting for the values of Bay Staters," said RNC Spokesperson Mandi Merritt. “With big pockets and an unhealthy fixation on impeaching our President, Steyer is attempting to buy support for his unpopular movement — but Americans want results, not resistance.”