Nancy Pelosi is really proud of her brand-new tool, a recently rediscovered section of a 1924 law, to get access to the last six years of Donald Trump's tax returns.

Watch her explain why she thinks there is an airtight case for forcing disclosure of the documents:

Jeanne Sahadi of CNN adds:

... thanks to a 1924 provision in the Internal Revenue Code, the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee are authorized to request the president's — or indeed anyone's — tax returns from the IRS to conduct an investigation.

She and the Democrats correctly believe that in the voluminous returns, they will find plenty to criticize.  It is a given that the sheer complexity of real estate taxation and magnitude of the sums involved will yield something.  They know that, and Trump knows it, too.  It is a bigger fishing expedition than a planeload of anglers headed to Cabo.

While there no doubt will be legal action by President Trump's lawyers explaining that this is an abuse of the oversight function of Congress since it is aimed purely at him, there is a danger of a rogue, Trump-hating judge going along with it and refusing a temporary stay during appeal.

While the legal avenue ought to be pursued, I have another suggestion.

Senator Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, should announce that if the House Ways and Means Committee pursues Trump's tax returns, it will go after Nancy Pelosi's tax returns, and for good measure George Soros's, Tom Steyer's, Dianne Feinstein's, and those of the top 20 donors to Democrat super-PACs.

That, more than anything else, should persuade the Dems that this would be a dangerous precedent.

Image credit: C-SPAN screen grab.