President Donald Trump weighed in on reports of his tax returns being leaked to the media, turning to Twitter to give his side of the story.
"Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, 'went to his mailbox' and found my tax returns," Trump tweeted early Wednesday morning. "FAKE NEWS!"
Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, "went to his mailbox" and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017
His comments come the morning after MSNBC host Rachel Maddow revealed on her show a leaked 1040 IRS tax form allegedly from Trump's 2005 tax returns. The tax returns showed that Trump paid $38 million in federal income taxes with an income of $150 million, giving him an effective tax rate of 25 percent.
Some conservative pundits questioned the legitimacy of the documents, while Democrats insisted the tax form proved Trump will support tax laws benefiting millionaires instead of the middle class.
David Cay Johnston, the investigative reporter who claims the tax documents were mailed to him even though he did not solicit them, floated the idea on MSNBC Tuesday evening that Trump could have been the one to send the documents directly to Johnston himself.
Trump has repeatedly refused to release his tax returns, saying since last year that he would release them after the audit he was undergoing was completed. In January, he became the first U.S. president in modern history to withhold his tax information from the American public.
