site of a condo building near mu amy that collapsed last month killing 98 people. but we begin this hour with nbc news justice correspondent pete williams in washington. walk us through this decision by the justice department and what means going forward. well, what it means is that congress may finally get the tax returns it s been seeking for two years. there is a federal law that says when anyst three congressional tax writing committees ask for individual returns, even though they normally must be kept confidential, they must be turned over to the congress that asks for them providing they are kept confidential by congress. they said, no, we re not going do this. they have a legislative reason tore wanting to see the return. something related to writing new laws. of what the republicans said at the time and trump administration said is they want to poke through these and find
something to embarrass the president. so, no, we re not going to do this. and at the time in 2019, the justice departments of office of legal counsel backed up that decision saying, yes, there has to be a legitimate purpose and congress doesn t have one. now the justice department said that was wrong and the law is clear when congress asks, it shall get. now we haven t heard yet from the treasury department about how soon this might happen. the congress as you mute expect the democrats are saying this is the right thing. they ve always thought the law was on their side. the question is, could the president now, the former president, try to go to court and block this? he can certainly try. he would succeed? that is a whole other matter. it s not clear that he would given what the law has said. starting this off with that breaking news. pete, thank you. joining us now to take a closer look at this.
joyce vance, professor at the alabama school of law. she is an msnbc legal analyst and david k. johnston, founder of dcreport.org. let s begin before we delve into a point that pete williams raise you had. the flip of the justice department revising the decision from 2019 to say that there is now awe legal purpose. it doesn t have to be simply legislative purpose in terms of why the tax returns should be handed over to this committee. is that a common practice or could a krit uk say that is because there is a leadership change or a political change and the department of justice under trump. they want to protect him. now it s different. i would expect that there were some criticism of this move by olc, the office of legal counsel. in reality this one is fair and
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