For years, Donald Trump has been claiming that he can’t release his tax returns because at least some of them are still under audit by the IRS.
As recently as this past Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeated that reasoning to reporters, saying, “The media’s been asking this question for four years, and for four years, the president has said the same thing, his taxes are under audit, and when they’re no longer under audit, he will release them.”
On Sunday morning, the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani blew up that excuse once and for all.
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After telling Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that he thought the Supreme Court ruling that the president must turn over his financial records to New York investigators was “terribly decided,” Giuliani said, “They have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong with his tax returns. All these tax returns have by and large—maybe not the last one—but all of them have been audited, all of them have either been passed on or settled.”
That last statement directly contradicted both Trump and his spokesperson’s excuse for not just releasing the returns to the public voluntarily.
“There should be some finality in tax returns,” he continued. “In other words, we get audited, we make a deal, we pay the government, you don’t come after me forever for that.”
From there, Giuliani moved on to spout unfounded conspiracy theories about “Soros-elected, anarchist DAs” that “are there to undermine the law.”
“I mean, why would Soros pay for DAs, other than to undermine our government?” he asked, referring to George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor and perpetual boogeyman for the right.
Instead of pushing back or inquiring about evidence for that outrageous claim, all Bartiromo said in response was, “Wow.”
