Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin recently told Congress he would be happy to provide information about Internal Revenue Service audits of presidents a task the agency performs every year. But when he was asked for those details on Wednesday, he didnt have the answers.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked Mnuchin during a hearing if the mandatory presidential audit would encompass previous tax years if the person who became president had been under audit for those years.

I dont know the answer to that but I can look into it, Mnuchin said. I do know the audit requirements are of the current years, but Id be happy to look to look into that issue and get back to you.

Mnuchins inability to answer such a basic question about the IRS presidential audits comes on the heels of his refusal to comply with a federal law allowing congressional tax-writing committees to obtain any persons tax returns.

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) requested Mnuchin and the IRS provide copies of the past six years of Trumps tax returns in April. Neals request stated the committees interest in conducting oversight of the IRSs routine audits of presidential tax returns. The IRS has audited every presidents taxes since a congressional investigation found that President Richard Nixon severely underpaid his taxes.

Mnuchin rejected Neals lawful request by insinuating that the committees interest in IRS presidential tax audits was merely a pretext to obtain and disseminate Trumps tax returns for partisan political purposes. If Democrats really wanted to know about presidential audits, Mnuchin said in a letter last month, we would be happy to accommodate that interest by providing additional information on the audit process.

Van Hollen said Wednesday, The fact that its difficult for you to answer that question underscores the congressional concern about whether or not the tax laws are being fairly applied.

Since 1977 the IRS has had a policy of auditing the president every year so that the decision to do so never falls on individual officials, who could feel pressure to make the decision one way or the other. The IRS put the policy in place after a congressional investigation a few years earlier revealed that even though the IRS had said Nixon had paid his federal income taxes, he actually owed hundreds of thousands of dollars.