Trump’s Refusal to Release Tax Returns Is a Ticking Time Bomb for the GOP
When Donald Trump sits down with Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tomorrow, there is a pressing issue that they should put before their party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He told the Associated Press on Tuesday that he has no plans to release his tax returns before the November election. “There’s nothing to learn from them,” he said. Previously, he had claimed he would love to release the returns as soon as an IRS audit is completed.
This is Trump’s bait-and switch-style at its most dangerous. Some Trump delegates and their alternates should write him an open letter demanding his unredacted tax returns. If he declines, they should declare they will abstain on the first ballot of the convention, driving him below the number needed to nominate. The delegates should not give us a time bomb that could help take down GOP control of the House or the Senate, or both.
A friend of Donald Trump’s recently approached him to suggest that he will eventually have to release his tax returns, as every presidential nominee has for decades. The friend told Trump that he should do it before the GOP convention to ensure everyone can process what’s in the returns and help make any revelations “old news” by November. If Trump didn’t do that, he was warned, the odds of politicized leaks from his returns were high, citing several examples from the Obama era, including the illegal leaking of some of Romney’s tax information by the IRS in 2012.
“What will you do if the returns come out as part of an October surprise?” Trump was asked. Trump pondered the question and replied, “I’ll say they aren’t mine.” That stunning answer is the essence of Donald Trump. “It’s exactly what I’d expect him to say,” Fox Business’s Charlie Gasparino, who has known Trump for decades, told me.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435254/donald-trumps-tax-returns-delegates-should-abstain-if-he-wont-release