Democratic donors call for Trump’s tax returns

Wealthy Democratic donors, many of whom run complex businesses, know how revealing tax returns can be. Perhaps that’s why they can’t stop talking about U. S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s refusal to release his.

From their suites at the Ritz- Carlton hotel, the finance hub at this week’s Democratic convention, and at the event’s auxiliary parties, supporters of Hillary Clinton are sounding the alarm about Trump’s break with decades of presidential campaign tradition.

Clinton put out eight years of tax filings last summer, and her backers lament that voters don’t seem to understand why Trump’s refusal to do the same matters.

Democratic talk of the taxes spilled on to the convention stage Wednesday night. Vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine, mocking Trump, said, “Believe me, there’s nothing suspicious in my tax returns. Believe me!” The crowd laughed.

There’s literally a bounty for the Trump documents.

Moishe Mana, a fundraiser for Clinton, has offered to give US$ 1 million to the charity of Trump’s choice if he makes them public. He joins an anonymous Republican donor who has made a similar offer of $5 million.

“Through his financial documents, we are trying to break into the image that he’s portraying to the Ameri can people,” said Mana, a real estate developer in Miami. “He says he’s a successful businessman who wants to do for the country what he did for his company. Well, go ahead, show me the money.”

Trump is unmoved. The billionaire owner of the Trump Organization, an international development company, says the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing his most recent returns and that he’ll release them once that audit is complete.

He reiterated that plan at a news conference in Doral, Fla. Asked when he would put out the documents, he said: “I don’t know. Depends on the audit.”

There’s no telling whether that would happen before election day, Nov. 8, but the IRS says there’s no legal reason Trump can’t make the tax returns public even as they are under review.

The issue has flared up in the wake of the hack of emails at the Democratic National Committee that the Obama administration said Wednesday was almost certainly the work of Russia. The group WikiLeaks released the emails on the eve of the convention, a leak its leader, Julian Assange, has said was timed to inflict political damage on Clinton.

Trump said Wednesday he has no ties to Russia whatsoever, but that hasn’t stopped Democratic donors in Philadelphia from saying that in the absence of Trump’s tax returns, voters are left to wonder whether there are undisclosed financial ties between Trump and foreign entities.

“Think of what’s gone on just this week and connect the dotted lines,” said top Clinton donor J. B. Pritzker, a billionaire venture capitalist in Chicago. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but it sure doesn’t look good. The question is who his investors are, and whether there are any in China or Russia that are affecting his personal income.”

Mana also wants that answered. If Trump is elected president, he said, “how much in debt would we be to other countries?”

While information about Trump’s debts has been made public in personal financial disclosures filed with federal election regulators, the Democratic donors s ay access to his t axes might shed light on previously unknown business arrangements. The returns also would detail for the first time how much he pays in income tax and how much he gives to charity.

“He is obfuscating in order to avoid being discovered as a liar,” Pritzker said.