Donald Trump’s son has a new reason why his father won’t release his tax returns: They’re too distracting.
The new rationale is a shift from the Republican nominee’s previous explanation that an ongoing audit is the reason why he won’t release his taxes — breaking with decades of tradition.
“Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from (his father’s) main message,” Donald Trump, Jr. told the Tribune-Review in Pennsylvania in a piece published Wednesday.
The comments come after Rep. Steve King told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday that putting out the returns would lead to misinterpretations.
“With a $10 billion business if Donald Trump dumped his taxes out today, there would be all kinds of misinterpretations of that and maybe some real interpretations of that between now and November. That would be the only discussion we’d have,” King, a Trump supporters, said on “New Day.” “So I’d say the window is closed on that but I wish he had done so last March or April.”
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has released nearly four decades of tax returns.