President again says he will make financial records public amid suits to hand over tax returns
U.S. President Donald Trump pledged Thursday to release his "financial statement" before the 2020 presidential election amid unrelenting pressure for him to make his tax returns public.
The billionaire hotelier-turned-president is the first Republican or Democratic Party candidate in over 40 years to refuse to make his tax returns public. He has been facing legal challenges to force him to do so.
Trump continued to bemoan former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, claiming the former FBI director "went over all of my financials, my taxes, and found nothing."
Mueller made no mention of combing through Trump's financial records in the redacted form of his exhaustive report on the 2016 election that was made publicly available.
"Now the Witch Hunt continues with local New York Democrat prosecutors going over every financial deal I have ever done," Trump fumed on Twitter. "This has never happened to a President before. What they are doing is not legal. But I’m clean, and when I release my financial statement (my decision) sometime prior to Election, it will only show one thing - that I am much richer than people even thought - And that is a good thing."
Trump did not specify what form his "financial statement" might come in. Specifically, he made no mention of his tax return.
Fending off criticism at the time, Trump said in September that he would issue an "extremely complete" financial record amid controversy that began with revelations of U.S. Air Force crews staying at his Scotland resort.
The state of New York and the House Oversight Committee have sued for access to Trump's tax returns, and the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay in the congressional case this week after an appeals court ruled in the committee's favor.
The pause is designed to allow the high court time to decide whether it will take up the case.
The New York case is centered on the state attorney general's request that Trump's accounting firm hand over eight years worth of the president's personal and business tax returns as the state continues to probe hush-money payments made to an adult film actress and a Playboy model in the run-up to the 2016 election.
That case is also now before the Supreme Court.
Trump is estimated to be worth more than $3 billion.
