House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board on Wednesday that Democrats would make exposing President Donald Trump’s tax returns a top priority if they win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in November and she is elected Speaker of the House.
The Chronicle‘s editor-in-chief, Audrey Cooper, live-tweeted Pelosi’s conversations with the editorial board, and reported Pelosi’s pledge on Trump’s tax returns:
One of the first things a Dem-majority would do in the House is ask for President Trump’s tax returns, Pelosi says. #Midterms2018
— Audrey Cooper (@audreycoopersf) October 10, 2018
Ironically, Pelosi’s vow to uncover Trump’s tax returns followed her pledge not to be vindictive if Democrats won:
Pelosi on the #Midterms2018 “One of the reasons we should win is we are not like them (GOP). We will not be like them. Don’t tell anyone I said this but there is a ‘pound of flesh’ club that says you should do to them what they’ve done to you. We will not.”
— Audrey Cooper (@audreycoopersf) October 10, 2018
Democrats have been obsessed with Trump’s tax returns since the 2016 election, convinced that they will turn up information that would damage or disqualify him, though the information has always been available to the Internal Revenue Service.
Last year, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow was mocked for hyping a Trump tax return from 2005 that revealed the rather ordinary fact that he had earned more than $150 million and paid $38 million in income taxes.
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the Trump family had reduced its tax burden by placing real estate assets in a family trust — again, a legal and common form of estate planning among the wealthy.
Trump is one of the few presidential candidates not to release his tax returns. His predecessor, Mitt Romney, was targeted by Democrats with false accusations about his taxes — even though he had made his recent returns available.
Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who led the campaign to demonize Romney, later justified his lies to CNN: “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
Republicans have warned that Democrats will prevent the administration from functioning if they win the House in November, as they have planned to launch over 100 investigations, many of them frivolous.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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