Republican Senator of Utah and former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney levied criticism at both Democrats and President Donald Trump due to their respective positions on the release of Trump’s tax returns, though he did reserve some stronger language for the Democrats, according to The Hill .
“Going after his tax returns through a legislative action is moronic,” Romney said in an appearance on Meet the Press. He also said that a challenge by the Democrats in the courts would be ultimately unsuccessful and that Trump was going to win on this issue in the end.
Romney did, however, reserve some criticism for Trump as well.
“[Trump] said he would be happy to release his returns. So I wish he’d do that,” Romney said, suggesting that while the Democrats’ pursuit of the returns might a losing battle, Trump should have simply released the returns on his own by now.
This isn’t the first time that Romney has taken on the Trump tax issue. During the 2016 primaries, as Trump battled it out with fellow Republicans in the GOP primaries, he accused Trump of “dodges” and “delays” when it came to his tax returns and went as far as to say that there would likely be one or more shocking revelations within.
“Frankly, I think we have a good reason to believe that there’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes,” he said then.
In any case, the current standoff remains primarily between Trump and Democrat Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. As The Inquisitr has detailed, Neal has requested six years of President Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns directly from the Internal Revenue Service. The request was made on the basis of a little known law that gives heads of congressional tax committees the power to request any tax return in the country. The law was enacted in 1924.
Is Mitt Romney possessed all of a sudden? Why is he behaving like a Republican team player? https://t.co/Pifj2L8vd8
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) April 7, 2019
For his part, Trump has maintained that the reason he has not released the returns on his own is that he is currently under audit by the IRS. There is no law or IRS regulation that would prohibit him from doing so, regardless of the status of an audit, but it is reasonable to assume that the president’s lawyers and accountants might advise not to disclose the returns in the midst of one.
“Hey, I’m under audit,” the president again told reporters on Friday, before indicating that the law is “100 percent on [his] side.”
