White House, Trump Pissed, Blast “Desperate” Media For Tax Return Leak

Well, the White House is pissed.

BREAKING: We've got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC.

(Seriously).

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 14, 2017

What we've got is from 2005… the President's 1040 form… details to come tonight 9PM ET, MSNBC.

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 15, 2017

Here’s the official statement released by the administration in an attempt to get out ahead of MSNBC’s reveal of the President’s 2005 tax returns:

As WSJ notes:

There was already evidence that Mr. Trump had a significant income tax liability in 2005. That was the year that he donated a conservation easement–a promise not to build houses–on his golf course in Bedminster, N.J.

That donation was worth $39.1 million, according to local records reported by The Wall Street Journal last year. He would have been unlikely to make such a donation without knowing he had income that it could offset.

Here’s a bit of unverified color:

Here are the deets https://t.co/YVxMB3ck1e pic.twitter.com/UEx3jLr6rF

— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) March 15, 2017

"It's entirely possible Donald leaked this to me," @DavidCayJ says of Trump's 2005 tax returns

— Jesse Byrnes (@jessebyrnes) March 15, 2017

Reported again by Bloomberg:

• Trump Paid $5.3m in Regular Income Tax in 2005: Daily Beast
• President Trump’s 2005 federal income tax return, obtained by DCReport.org, shows Trump and his wife Melania paying $5.3m in regular federal income tax, the Daily Beast reports.
  • Document shows Trumps paid an additional $31m in the so- called “alternative minimum tax”

Here’s some epic irony:

More humor from Wall Street:

https://twitter.com/ReformedBroker/status/841824048015392768

And from me:

goddammit. i need to get up early, early to track Europe on Wed. and maddow is making me think i should have already gone to bed

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) March 15, 2017

the question no one is asking tonight: what does Frederick Douglass think? #TaxReturns

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) March 15, 2017

And from The New York Times:

https://twitter.com/BCAppelbaum/status/841825070150381568

And CNBC:

Among biggest news re: Trump's 2005 tax return, says @maddow, is that "this stuff is obtainable."

— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) March 15, 2017

And finally, for reference, a list of reasons Trump has given in the past for not releasing his returns:

• Trump: “I’m being audited … so I can’t.” (See next section.) (Repeatedly since February)
• Trump: “There’s nothing to learn from them.” (Fact-checkers say this is false.) (February, February, May, May, January)
• Trump: “Mitt Romney looked like a fool when he delayed and delayed and delayed and … didn’t file until a month and a half before the election and it cost him big league.” (February, July)
• Trump: His tax rate is “none of your business.” (May)
• Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman: American people “wouldn’t understand them.” (May)
• Manafort: The only people who want them “are the people who want to defeat him.” (May)
• Trump: “I don’t think anybody cares.” (Polls show this is false.) (May, September)
• Eric Trump, son: Would be “foolish” to release; “you would have a bunch of people who know nothing about taxes trying to look through and trying to come up with assumptions on things that they know nothing about.” (August)
• Mike Pence, vice president who released his tax returns: They’re a “distraction.” (September)
• Donald Trump Jr.: “Would distract from (his dad’s) main message.” (September)
• Kellyanne Conway, then-campaign manager and current counselor to the president: “I just can’t find where this is a burning issue to most of the Americans.” (In April, before joining his campaign, Conway said, “Donald Trump’s tax returns aren’t … transparent” and called for their release.) (September)
• Jeffrey Lord, commentator: Tax returns are “a political gimmick, a gotcha … Political opponents are going to go through there and look to make issues out of things.” (September)
• Trump Jr.: “There’s a lot in a 12,000-page tax return that wouldn’t make sense to open up.” (September)
• Trump: “You will learn more about Donald Trump” by looking at his financial disclosure forms than by looking at tax returns. (Fact-checkers say this is false.) (September)
• Rudy Giuliani, Trump surrogate: “The way all of you are treating this is a very good indication of why someone might not want to release their tax returns.” (October)
• Trump: Blames Clinton for fact he doesn’t pay taxes: “A lot of my write-off was depreciation, and that, Hillary as a senator, allowed. The people that give her all this money want it.” (As a senator, Clinton did vote to close tax loopholes – including one Trump may have used to pay no federal income taxes.) (October)
• Trump: “The only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters.” (Roughly 74 percent of Americans, including 53 percent of Republicans, say Trump should make his tax returns public, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll in January.) (January)
• Conway: “People didn’t care. They voted for him, and let me make this very clear: Most Americans are very focused on what their tax returns will look like while President Trump is in office, not what his look like.” (January)