White House Says President Trump Will Not Release His Tax Returns

President Donald Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway announced on Sunday that Trump would not release his tax returns, which reverses months of repeated promises during his campaign to release them after an audit had been completed.

The comments from Conway came as a response to a petition at Whitehouse.gov with over 200,000 signatures that called on Trump to release the returns.

Any petition on that site that receives at least 100,000 signatures in a period of 30 days receives a White House response. The petition reached twice the figure in only two days.

The response by the White House is that Trump will not release the tax returns, said Conway during an interview on This Week a Sunday television show on ABC.

Trump broke a decade’s long precedent during the presidential campaign by being the first major party presidential nominee in four decades to not release tax returns.

He cited repeatedly an ongoing audit by the IRS in refusing to hand the returns over but said he would release them eventually when the IRS had completed its audit.

However, Trump and allies have continually argued that his person tax returns have no relevance, a statement made again Sunday by Conway.

She added that the campaign litigated the issue throughout the election and people did not care. Conway said they voted for him.

She went on to say that she wanted to be clear that most Americans were focused on what their own tax returns are going to look like with President Trump in the White House, not what the president’s look like.

Conway continued by say everyone knows that Trump and his family have complied with every ethical rule, everything needed to step away from his many businesses and be a president on a full time basis.

However, the general population seems to have a different opinion. A number of polls show that the majority of people in the U.S. believe that Trump should hand over his tax returns. A poll released a week ago by ABC News found that 75% of Americans polled believe Trump should release the returns.

Last Friday, another investigation revealed that despite the pledge by Trump to transfer control of the many businesses he owns to his kids, as part of an agreement on ethics as the president, he to date has not filed the needed documents in New York, Delaware and Florida.