Trump to release his tax returns

President Donald Trump may now have to release his tax returns following his widely-panned summit with  Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland earlier this week.

This came as prominent lawmakers, pundits, and watchdog groups insisted for  President Trump to release his returns.

During a Monday press conference alongside Putin ,Trump cast doubt on the US intelligence community’s assessment claiming the Putin’s government interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

He also attacked his Democratic opponents and the FBI, and said he held both countries accountable for their state of relations.

According to President Trump during a press conference alongside Russia President Putin, “My people came to me Dan Coats came to me, some others  they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

The press conference came hours-long after a private meeting between the two high end presidents.

President Trump further cited that President Putin strongly denied intefering with the US elections. And he seemed to endorse a plan Putin proposed that would allow special counsel Robert Mueller’s team to work with Russian investigators to question 12 Russians indicted last week by Mueller.

On Tuesday, Trump said he misspoke and actually meant to say the opposite of what he said — that he didn’t see any reason why it “wouldn’t” be Russia who interfered.

In a further statement Trump said, “I’ve said this many times,I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place.”

Following Trump’s statement,  the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer  forced the Republicans on having the President to release the returns.

In his statement Senator Schumer said,  “President Trump’s inexplicable behavior has many Americans asking, ‘what does Putin have over him’ that he’s behaving in a way that is basically inexplicable in any rational, logical line of thinking? Well, that’s why his tax returns would be so important. We should pass legislation that requires the president to release his tax returns. That was important before, but it’s so much more important after Helsinki now.”

Republican Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, also came out to back Mr. Schumer  on having Trump release the tax returns.

While talking to The Washington Post, Sanford said that by releasing the returns would clear up questions regarding any connections to Russia, adding that he didn’t know if Russia had anything on Trump.

Conservative columnist George Will, who has repudiated Trump, suggested in a Washington Post column on Tuesday that the president refused to release the filings because “he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret.”

In a column written by Conservative columnist George Will stated that, the refusal of Trump to release his returns indicated that he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret.

He further added that, “The most innocent inference is that for decades he has depended on an American weakness, susceptibility to the tacky charisma of wealth, which would evaporate when his tax returns revealed that he has always lied about his wealth.

Another writer from Bloomberg Tim O’Brien also said that, for the president to release the returns: would show whether business dealings in Russia could give Putin leverage over the president.”

President Trump became the first major party presidential nominee to not release his tax returns since former President Richard Nixon in 2016. He claimed that he was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. However, an IRS audit does not preclude someone from making their returns public.

Late last year, when questioned about how the GOP tax legislation would affect the president, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the returns would not be released because they were “still under audit.”

Now that he is president, Trump’s taxes are automatically subject to audits from the IRS. IRS rules state that both the president’s and vice president’s tax returns are given a full, mandatory, fast-tracked audit.

Trump himself has given no signal that he will eventually release the filings.

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