Trump Jr: My Dad’s ‘12,000-Page’ Tax Return Would Prompt Too Many Queries

Donald Trump, Jr. makes remarks at the 2016 Republican National Convention held at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday, July 19, 2016. Credit: Ron Sachs / CNP (RESTRICTION: NO New York or New Jersey... Donald Trump, Jr. makes remarks at the 2016 Republican National Convention held at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday, July 19, 2016. Credit: Ron Sachs / CNP (RESTRICTION: NO New York or New Jersey Newspapers or newspapers within a 75 mile radius of New York City) Photo by: Ron Sachs/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images MORE LESS
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Donald Trump Jr. said that one reason his father has yet to release his tax returns, in a break from four decades of precedent for presidential candidates, was that the complicated documents would provoke too many questions.

“He’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from [his father’s] main message,” Trump Jr. said in a Wednesday interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The press and other Republican politicians have for months urged Trump to make his returns public in the interest of transparency. Hillary and Bill Clinton have made their own returns from 1977 onward available online.

The real estate mogul and his surrogates have insisted that they won’t release tax information while he is undergoing a routine IRS audit, though the IRS said there was no problem with him doing so.

In an interview on Fox News last week, however, Trump said he would release his returns “immediately” if Clinton publicized any remaining emails from the private server she used as secretary of state.

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