Darrell Issa (R-CA), a supporter of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told host Wolf Blitzer that 2012 GOP presidential nomination former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) needs to get past notion that his first choice to carry the Republican banner in this fall’s presidential election did not win and that he should get behind Trump.
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In an interview with the Associated Press, Donald Trump made big news by suggesting he wasn’t going to release his tax returns this year.
“Given Mr. Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size”, he said.
“There’s nothing to learn from them”, Trump said of his tax returns.
“I released my financial statements, which are much more important”, Trump told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos during an interview back in February, referring to his FEC filings.
Romney, who released two years’ worth of his tax returns during his 2012 presidential campaign, in March called Trump “a phony, a fraud”, and speculated that his tax returns must contain “a bombshell”.
“You have to ask yourself, why doesn’t he want to release them?” asked Clinton at a crowd at a community college gymnasium in Blackwood, New Jersey, on Wednesday, according to the New York Times. The tradition of presidential candidates releasing their tax returns dates back to Richard Nixon.
The financial disclosure Mr Trump gave to the Federal Election Commission last summer that he was worth $10bn, but it was inexact and incomplete. Mitt Romney, criticizing Trump’s reluctance to release the forms, implied they might reveal “a potential for hidden inappropriate associations with… criminal organizations or other unsavory groups”. Romney, who has been critical of Trump’s rise, rejected Trump’s reasoning for not releasing documents.
The backlash over Trump’s reneging on the release of his tax returns should, but likely won’t, put a halt to the talk about Trump as inevitable.
Clinton said Trump’s tax agenda was “written by a billionaire for billionaires”, while she is “running a campaign that is focused on restoring the American dream”.
At The Atlantic, David Graham zeroed in on Trump’s “long history of questionable finances” to emphasize why the tax returns matter.
Every major party nominee since the late 1970s has released tax returns before Election Day. “No lawyer would say release it when you are under audit”.
Transparency and accountability: Trump is seeking the most powerful office in the world.
Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who has endorsed Trump, also told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that the real estate mogul told him that he intends to release his taxes after the audit.
Massive deductions. I realize he’s bulletproof, but a tax return showing that those massive deductions left very little taxable income might be a problem EVEN for him. He has also correctly noted that the income shown on his tax returns isn’t a reflection of his total wealth.
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Of the Democratic Party presidential candidates, Clinton, the front-runner, has posted returns from the past eight years on her website, and decades of returns for her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are available online.
