One of Donald Trump’s Biggest Nightmares Just Came True (No, Not the One in Which He’s Forced to Give Don Jr. and Eric Regular Hugs)

Since Donald Trump kicked off his original bid for the presidency in 2015, he’s gone to comical lengths to keep his tax returns secret. From making up a rule that he couldn’t release them because they were under audit to begging the Supreme Court to come to his rescue to installing a Treasury secretary who basically vowed to shred every copy of his returns into tiny little pieces and then swallow them whole before letting Congress get its hands on them, it’s been a long, ridiculous run. And now, after seven long years, that run has come to its bitter end.

On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee was officially given access to six years of Trump‘s tax records. This came after the Supreme Court last week rejected the ex-president’s bid to keep them from being released to the legislative body, which first asked the Treasury Department for them way back in 2019. In a statement, a spokesperson for the department told The New York Times that the “Treasury has complied with last week’s court decision.” She did not provide further details, noting only that the records were handed over “consistent with the guidelines of 6103,” which is the section of law that gives the Ways and Means Committee chairman—in this case, Richard Neal—the power to request them.

As the Times notes, it’s “not clear whether the tax returns will contain major new revelations,” since we’ve already learned a lot about Trump’s finances over the last several years. For instance, in 2019, Michael Cohen, the then president’s former fixer, told Congress that Trump regularly inflated and deflated the value of his assets when it benefited him. And earlier this year, the New York attorney general sued Trump and his three eldest children on accusations of lying to lenders and insurers about said assets. (At the time the suit was filed, an attorney for Trump insisted that “absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place.”) There’s also the matter of the criminal case against the Trump Organization, which last year was charged with, among other things, multiple counts of tax fraud (the company, which has pleaded not guilty, is currently on trial in Manhattan). And then, of course, there’s the 2018 story from a trio of Pulitzer Prize–winning Times reporters revealing that Trump amassed much of his fortune through “dubious tax schemes,” some of which included “instances of outright fraud.” (At the time, a lawyer for Trump insisted that “The New York Times’ allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100% false and highly defamatory. There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone.” He added that if there was fraud or tax evasion, Trump had nothing to do with it, saying: “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters.” Two years later, the same outlet revealed that Trump had paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, another $750 in 2017, and absolutely nothing in 10 of the previous 15 years. 

Unfortunately for the committee, it has very little time to actually examine Trump’s returns, given that in approximately one month, Republicans will take control of the House, at which point, we assume, they’ll attempt to pass a law declaring it legal for anyone they like to commit tax fraud and various other financial crimes. (Another law that’s likely to be proposed: a federal requirement for every single American to watch at least 75 consecutive days of Hunter Biden hearings.) On the other hand, it’s probably going to be a very stressful month for one Donald J. Trump.

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Oh look, another terrible story about Herschel Walker

It’s almost as though he shouldn’t be elected to the Senate. Per The Daily Beast:

A former longtime girlfriend of Republican senatorial candidate Herschel Walker has come forward to detail a violent episode with the football star, who she believes is “unstable” and has “little to no control” over his mental state when he is not in treatment. The woman, Dallas resident Cheryl Parsa, described an intimate and tumultuous five-year relationship with Walker in the 2000s, beginning shortly after his divorce and continuing for a year after the publication of his 2008 memoir about his struggle with dissociative identity disorder (DID), once known as multiple personality disorder.

Parsa provided a detailed account of a 2005 incident that turned violent after she caught Walker with another woman at his Dallas condo. She said Walker grew enraged, put his hands on her chest and neck, and swung his fist at her. “I thought he was going to beat me,” she recalled, and fled in fear.… Complicating matters, she said, Walker often carried a gun, which he would sometimes play with in front of her.… The Daily Beast sent a Walker campaign spokesperson detailed questions for this article. The spokesperson declined to comment.