Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence says he will release his tax returns next week, drawing a stark contrast with his running mate, Donald Trump, who has refused to release them until an Internal Revenue Service audit is completed.
The Indiana governor made the announcement in an interview with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd when asked about how the Trump campaign can criticize Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her transparency when both he and Trump have yet to release more personal financial details.
“Donald Trump and I are both going to release our tax returns. I’ll release mine in the next week,” he told Todd in an excerpt of the interview released Saturday. “Donald Trump will be releasing his tax returns at the completion of an audit.”
Trump has said he will release his tax returns when he is no longer being audited, though there is no legal reason he cannot do so during an audit. In refusing to release the returns, he has broken with decades of modern presidential campaign precedent. Several members of his party, including Reps. Sean Duffy and Jason Chaffetz, have said he should disclose them.
Clinton released her 2015 tax returns last month and eight years of personal income tax returns in 2015.
Todd also asked Pence about the release on Friday of the FBI notes from its interview with Clinton about her use of a private email server while leading the State Department. The release revealed that Clinton said she couldn’t recall key details and events related to classified information procedures and that a person deleted Clinton’s archive mailbox shortly after the server became publicly known.
“Well, it’s just more evidence that Hillary Clinton is the most dishonest candidate for president of the United States since Richard Nixon,” Pence said.
“With regard to classified information, she either knew or should’ve known that she was placing classified information in a way that exposed it to being hacked and being made available in the public domain, even to enemies of this country,” Pence added.
The FBI has said there is no evidence that hacking attempts of Clinton’s server were successful.