Trump has been hit by Republicans and Democrats for months over his refusal to release his tax returns. “It has nothing to do with Russian Federation, it has nothing to do with any country other than the United States and his normal tax auditing processes, so that issue will be dealt with when the audits are done”, Manafort said.
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Donald Trump is refusing to release his tax returns, despite promising repeatedly to do so.
The disclosure of tax returns by presidential candidates has been a common occurrence since the 1970s, according to Tax History Project, which collects tax data on presidential candidates. The billionaire businessman has been called on throughout the campaign to release them, but even after being officially crowned the nominee last week at the Republican National Convention, Trump has refused.
Trump has been fickle about releasing his own tax filings.
It’s worth noting, though, that releasing Trump’s tax returns wouldn’t completely put this issue to bed.
“No, I actually think that it’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money and you’ve employed a lot of people”, Trump said.
“It would be interesting to see, I will tell you this, Russia, if you’re listening I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”, Trump said.
And this afternoon, the Donald appeared to ask for Vladimir Putin’s help in tracking down some of Hillary Clinton’s emails – which had been deleted before an investigation into her use of a private email server.
Matters are particularly troubling when it comes to Trump and Russia-though the release of Trump’s tax returns might go a long way toward making them less so. In February, former Republican nominee Mitt Romney called on Trump to release his returns, saying that doing so was a necessary qualification for running for president and suggesting that Trump’s returns contained a “bombshell” that he wanted to hide.
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According to the New York Times, Trump stated a number of times that he would release his returns when the audit was complete, but now campaign aides say that there are no plans to release the information ahead of the election. Asked to clarify that Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs, Manafort responded, “That’s what he said….”
