http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/24/jeb-bush-apologizes-to-donors-for-failure-of-his-campaign/4:56 pm ET By Alan Rappeport and Maggie Haberman
Updated, 5:29 p.m. | Mitt Romney emerged from political hibernation on Wednesday and issued a challenge to Donald J. Trump: Show us your taxes.
Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, raised serious questions about the party’s apparent front-runner for the nomination this year, suggesting that there was most likely something unseemly in Mr. Trump’s tax returns and that perhaps the Manhattan businessman was not as rich as he likes to let on.
“Frankly, I think we have good reason to believe that there’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes,” Mr. Romney said in an interview with Fox News.
Asked what he meant, Mr. Romney shared some theories: “Either he’s not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is, or he hasn’t been paying the kind of taxes we would expect him to pay, or perhaps he hasn’t been giving money to the vets or to the disabled like he’s been telling us he’s been doing.”
The remarks from Mr. Romney come as mainstream Republicans have grown increasingly nervous that Mr. Trump will be the party’s nominee. Mr. Romney expressed little hope that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas could break through at this point.
“Donald Trump has the clearest path to become the Republican nominee,” Mr. Romney said in some of his most expansive public comments on the state of the campaign. “I think for the other people still in the race, their path is becoming a slimmer and slimmer opening, and they’re having a difficult time communicating to their supporters just how they could become the nominee.”
Mr. Romney said that he was not singling out Mr. Trump per se, and that he thought all of the candidates should release their tax information before Republican voters pick a nominee.
Mr. Romney, who is a multimillionaire, released his tax returns in early 2012 after coming under pressure from Democrats. By calling on Mr. Trump to do the same, Mr. Romney, a two-time presidential candidate, is, in a way, taking a page out of the playbook of Senator Harry Reid, who had accused Mr. Romney of not paying taxes for years.
Mr. Trump has said publicly that he will release his tax information in the coming months and that the delay has been due to the complexity of his finances. He claims to be worth $10 billion and has said that he pays as little taxes as possible because he loathes how the government spends his money.
Having heard such excuses before, Mr. Romney said that even returns from previous years would be helpful.
“The reason I think there is a bombshell in there is because every time he is asked about his taxes, he dodges and delays and says, ‘Well, we’re working on it,'” Mr. Romney said. “Hey, we’re not talking about the taxes that are coming due this year. We are talking about taxes already filed, back taxes.”
When the information is eventually released, Mr. Romney will be eager to see what Mr. Trump is hiding.
“Frankly, the voters have a right to see those tax returns before they decide who our nominee ought to be,” he said.
Mr. Romney has come under some pressure from allies of Mr. Rubio to endorse him, in the hopes of demonstrating a show of force that could compel Gov. John Kasich of Ohio to leave the race. But Mr. Romney has told allies that he isn’t ready yet to make an endorsement.
However, he has been incensed by Mr. Trump’s rise, according to people familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing private conversations.
The question of unreleased tax returns dogged Mr. Romney throughout the 2012 race. When he finally released them that September, he was hammered for having paid an effective tax rate of less than 15 percent.
Some Republican pundits have publicly told Mr. Trump that he was taking a risk waiting to release his returns.
