Mike Pence to release tax returns next week
Marking a departure from the tax return disclosure policy of Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee, Mike Pence, said he would publicly release his tax return documents next week.
In a “Meet the Press” interview clip out Saturday, Pence was pressed by NBC News’ Chuck Todd about the GOP ticket’s tax documents.
“Donald Trump and I are both going to release our tax returns,” said the Indiana governor. “I’ll release mine in the next week.”
“Donald Trump,” he added, “will be releasing his tax returns at the completion of an audit.”
When Todd asked whether Trump would release them before the election on Nov. 8, Pence responded: “Well, we’ll see.”
Hillary Clinton, along with her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, has already released several years’ worth of tax returns.
Trump, despite numerous calls (including from his own party) for his own public disclosure of his tax returns, has refused to do the same, promising that he would only release them once the IRS finishes its audit.
The tax exchange followed a discussion on the latest documents released from the FBI investigation into Clinton’s private server, where Pence charged Clinton with being “the most dishonest candidate for president of the United States since Richard Nixon.”
“What’s evident from all of the revelations over the last several weeks is that Hillary Clinton operated in such a way to keep her emails, and particularly her interactions while secretary of state with the Clinton Foundation, out of the public reach, out of public accountability,” the VP candidate 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 that the server debacle “truly does disqualify her from serving as the president of the United States.”