Did Donald Trump Release Donald Trump’s Tax Return?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Charles Cooke was not impressed with Rachel Maddow’s presentation last night of President Trump’s 2005 tax return:

For a moment, it seemed that Rachel Maddow was in possession of a genuine scoop. And then, all of a sudden, it didn’t….Thanks to MSNBC, the suggestion that Trump has “paid no taxes in 18 years” has now been definitively proven to be false. Moreover, Trump seems to have paid a higher tax rate in 2005 than did most political figures, and to have enjoyed a sizeable income to boot. Whether the report was cherry-picked we cannot possibly know. But on the basis of what was presented last night, the president looks both pretty accomplished and perfectly law-abiding. What, one wonders, did Maddow think she was achieving?

David Cay Johnston says he received the tax return in the mail, and he was surprisingly aggressive about suggesting that it might well have come from Donald Trump himself. “It’s just a possibility,” he said, but it was the very first thing he mentioned on the show.

At first I dismissed it. But then I started to wonder. Maybe 2005 was a year when Trump had both high income and high taxes. If so, anonymously releasing just one page from just that year could be an outrageous but savvy PR move—the kind of thing that Trump is very good at. Besides, there are very few people with access to Trump’s taxes, and who would have an incentive to release just this single page? Not someone who’s trying to blow a whistle on the guy. It almost had to come from somebody working in Trump’s interests.

I dunno. We’re all wearing tinfoil hats these days, aren’t we?

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate