President Donald Trump said Sunday that he expected that “at some point” Congress will see his “financial statement.”
“They’re after my financial statement – the Senate, they’d like to get my financial statement. At some point I hope they get it,” he said in an interview, adding that he “might” hand over his “fantastic financial statement” at some point.
Trump, who is the only president not to release his tax returns while in office, complained that Congress has been requesting statements “they’ve never asked another President for.” His administration rejected those requests and on Friday, the Department of Justice released a legal opinion backing the refusal to turn over the President’s tax returns.
In its 33-page memo, the Justice Department said that making Trump’s tax return public served no “legitimate legislative purpose.”
Last month, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neale, issued a subpoena to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig after they turned down Neale’s request to get President Trump’s personal and business tax returns from the past six years.
The New York Times reported in May that Trump’s businesses reportedly lost $1.17 billion between 1985 and 1994, citing information from tax documents from those years.
During the interview, several outlets write, Trump also directed his Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to leave the room after Mulvaney coughed in the middle of Trump’s statement about his financial records.
“If you’re going to cough, please leave the room,” Trump told his chief of staff. “You just can’t, you just can’t cough.”
President Trump is a self-proclaimed “germophobe,” who has said in the past that he washed his hands “as many times as possible” each day and that he does not like shaking hands.
After Mulvaney left the Oval Office, the President asked the ABC team if they wanted to do the shot over and continued discussing his tax returns. When George Stephanopoulos pressed the President that the release of his financial records was up to him, Trump said, “No, it’s not up to me. It’s up to lawyers; it’s up to everything else.”
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