We've Got Donald Trump's 2005 Leaked Tax Returns and Here's What You Should Know
Donald Trump hasn’t officially released his tax returns yet. Slowly but surely though, parts of them are making their way out to the American public.
As tax day approaches people still want answers (or receipts) of The Donald’s past dealings to find out how they might affect his future policy proposals moving forward. The sheer fact that MSNBC show host Rachel Maddow announced on Twitter that she had two pages from Trump’s 2005 1040 form was nearly enough to break the internet. (Or at least the stream. It was lagging heavy.)
On Tuesday night’s (March 14) program, Maddow dedicated her full hour to the tax returns given to her by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who obtained them from an anonymous source.
The 1040 form reveals that the president paid over $38 million in taxes in 2005 on an income of about $150 million. This did coincide with the 24 percent he should’ve been paying that year, which prompted the White House to point out that MSNBC was “desperate for ratings.” In a statement released shortly before the show aired, the WH claimed that Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the country at the time and claimed Maddow’s publicizing of Trump’s returns was “illegal.”
It’s in fact not illegal to publish such content as long as sensitive information isn’t disclosed. It’s interesting to contemplate who leaked the documents though. Some say the White House itself did in order to prove that Trump’s taxes were nothing out of the ordinary, and a full-scale release of all of his tax forms would prove to be unimportant.
Still, this was only two documents from one type of form in one year. Charitable donations, financial connections, or the like were not made available via MSNBC. The 2005 forms are much less incriminating than Trump’s 1995 returns, which show he took a major loss and would’ve made him eligible to not pay taxes for years.
Tuesday night’s show is just the latest in which Rachel Maddow has investigated shady business or relationships Trump and his staffers have had. Prior to actually revealing the 2005 forms on national television, Maddow recapped her episodes dedicated to shining a light on potential scandals like the former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s financial connections to Turkey, Trump’s business dealings with a corrupt ambassador of Azerbaijan and his potential meetings with Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev.
Check out the full returns as well as Rachel Maddow’s presentation of them (and the reaction to them) below.
