After reporter David Cay Johnston revealed President Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show Tuesday night, Trump tried to delegitimize the report in an early-morning tweet on Wednesday.
Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, “went to his mailbox” and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017
However, the White House had confirmed the numbers in the tax return hours earlier.
Before Maddow and Johnston revealed Trump’s tax records on air, the White House preemptively issued a statement saying that the President earned $150 million and paid $38 million in income taxes in 2005.
“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” the statement from the White House read.
It’s unclear who sent the tax returns to Johnston, a former tax reporter for the New York Times who wrote a book about Trump. Johnston said on MSNBC Tuesday night that Trump himself may have mailed him the records.
“Donald Trump has over the years leaked all sorts of things,” he said. “Donald has a long history of leaking material about himself when he thinks it’s in his interest.”
Reporter who got tax returns released to him in the mail suggests that Trump himself might have sent them to him. #TrumpsTaxReturns pic.twitter.com/g3V04x2iWp
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) March 15, 2017
Whatever. Time to focus on AHA and Russiagate again.
Any old crap to stay in the headlines.
BTW: I truly hate the above photo of Drumpfie. It looks like he’s just plucked out a nose hair and is bragging about its size.
These 12 year-old tax returns are a head-fake by Trump to distract. They are irrelevant.
The resistance and the press need to keep focus on what’s ahead. Listen closely, and you can hear the drums of war getting slowly louder. North Korea seems the likely target.
My money is on drump being the leaker to try to distract from everything else.
What is the statute of limitations on tax debts? If it’s ten years, this reveal is kind of a so what. Besides the really interesting stuff probably is more recent, especially since the 2009 bankruptcy. While this does count as a drop of transparency from a person in high political office with zero transparency otherwise, the demand should be for more recent stuff. It’s a lot to digest: over 100 corporate entities and possibly incomplete filings. But for the sake of the country, Trump should show us the record or step down. He can’t continue with this ruse.