Donald Trump should release his tax returns and full medical records, Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Jason Chaffetz (Utah) said Wednesday.
“You’re just going to have to do that, it’s too important,” Chaffetz said on CNN. “If you’re going to run and try to become the president of the United States, you’re going to have to open up your kimono and show everything, your tax returns, your medical records.”
Chaffetz said that the standard applies to both candidates. Clinton has released her 2015 tax return and medical history. Trump has only released a cursory, bombastic letter from his doctor.
Trump said in May that he hoped to release his tax returns, but has since refused to, saying he can’t because he’s under audit by the IRS. However, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said that being under audit does not prevent a person from releasing returns. “If you’re being audited, and you want to do something else, share that information with your returns, you can do that,” Koskinen told CSPAN in February.
In July, Trump’s then-campaign chairman was adamant that the Republican nominee would not release his tax returns. Earlier this week, Eric Trump said it would be “foolish” for his father to release his taxes. “You learn a lot more when you look at a person’s assets,” Eric said. “You know how many hotels we have around the world? You know how many golf courses we have around the world?”
The value of Trump’s assets, however, is not the simple matter Eric Trump implies it is. In his personal financial disclosure detailing those assets, Donald Trump says he is worth $10 billion. Bloomberg and Forbes, however, estimate his wealth at $2.9 billion and $4.5 billion, respectively. And Tim O’Brien wrote in his 2005 biography of Trump that “three people with direct knowledge of Donald’s finances, people who had worked closely with him for years, told me that they thought his net worth was somewhere between $150 million and $250 million.”
The New York Times reported last week that Trump’s debt totaled $650 million, about twice as much as the candidate had disclosed. The discrepancy, the Times said, arises from the fact that the financial disclosure forms for candidates are not designed for a person with business dealings as complex as Trump’s are.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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