Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, grew testy with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday during an exchange over the department’s response to information requests.
Wyden criticized Mnuchin for refusing to comply with a request from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) for President Trump’s tax returns, even as Treasury complies with requests for financial records from Senate GOP chairmen. Wyden said the move “looks political.”
Wyden did not mention specifics of the GOP probe but appeared to be referring to the investigation from Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are conducting about Hunter Biden, Burisma Holdings and Ukraine.
In that investigation, Grassley and Johnson have sought suspicious activity reports (SARs) from Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. SARs are reports that financial institutions file about actions that might suggest criminal activity in an effort to help detect and prevent money laundering.
“It looks to me like there’s a double standard here,” Wyden said.
Mnuchin said that he hasn’t provided Neal with Trump’s tax returns because Treasury has “significant concerns” about the request on the advice of counsel. He said the tax return request is “very different” from requests for SARs.
“On a bipartisan basis, we have responded to thousands of SARs requests to the committees from both Republicans and Democrats,” Mnuchin said.
Wyden appeared to be unsatisfied with Mnuchin’s answer, interjecting and saying, “Mr. Secretary, you are stonewalling about stonewalling.”
“That’s really not fair at all,” Mnuchin replied.
“Two committee chairs, one gets no response, with legal authority, that’s the Democrat, the Republican gets a quick response,” Wyden said.
Mnuchin said that Treasury has responded to requests from Wyden and others for “thousands of SARs.”
Grassley said that his investigation with Johnson “has nothing to do with” tax returns and is proceeding methodically.