Democratic nominee Joe Biden released his 2019 tax return on Tuesday, just hours before his debate against President Donald Trump, seeking to draw a contrast with the president, who has sought to keep his tax returns private.
Trump denounced the New York Times report as “fake news.” In a tweet on Monday, he complained the newspaper obtained his tax returns “illegally” and then reported on them with “only bad intent.”
The New York Times said it obtained the two decades of tax returns from sources it said had legal access to the documents. The newspaper declined to provide the documents to the Trump Organization.
The Epoch Times reached out to The New York Times for comment regarding its report but has not received a reply.
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the New York Times that “most, if not all” of the information about the tax returns appears to be inaccurate, adding that Trump paid “millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015,” while over the past 10 years, he paid “tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government.”
“First of all, I paid a lot,” he said. “I paid a lot of state income taxes too. New York state charges a lot.”
News outlets and various Democratic officials at the state and federal level have tried to obtain Trump’s tax returns over the past four years.
Democrats in the House of Representatives have sued the president in a quest for the tax returns. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who has tried unsuccessfully to obtain Trump’s tax records, said The New York Times report makes it even more essential for his committee to get the documents.
“Now Donald Trump is the boss of the agency he considers an adversary. It is essential that the IRS’s presidential audit program remain free of interference,” Neal wrote.
A substantial amount of interest about the president’s tax returns was centered on whether they'd reveal a connection to Russia. The New York Times found no such connection.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News on Sept. 28 that Democrats are replaying “the same playbook they tried in 2016—the same playbook that the American people rejected and will do so again.”