He refuses to disclose his tax returns...

[csziggy]

30. I keep remembering that the tradition of presidential candidates relaesing tax returns

Started because Richard Nixon did illegal things on his tax returns.

Nixon's Failed Effort to Withhold His Tax Returns

Aug 2, 2016 3:04 PM EDT
By Stephen Mihm

<SNIP>

But then things unraveled. The best account of Nixon’s tax travails comes from the historian Joseph Thorndike. Thanks to a deposition in a civil suit connected to the Watergate burglary in 1973, reporters learned that Nixon had taken a rather unusual tax break in 1969.

How unusual? The Washington Post determined that he had deeded his vice-presidential papers to the National Archives and taken a charitable deduction of around $500,000. Amazingly, such practices had been legal until 1969: Presidents and vice presidents donated their public papers and took a write-off. But that year, Congress closed the loophole.

<SNIP>

In 1970, Nixon proceeded to donate his papers, but ordered Morgan to backdate the deed of gift to March 27, 1969, before the law made it illegal for him to take the deduction.

But this wasn’t known at the time. In 1973, however, as the Watergate scandal put a spotlight on the secretive president, tax experts called for the IRS to audit Nixon. The agency refused. Then in early October, an employee at an IRS service center in West Virginia leaked information about Nixon’s tax returns showing that the president had only paid $792.81 in federal income taxes in 1970 and $878.03 in 1971, but reported income in excess of $200,000. The explanation, of course, was the fishy charitable donation.

More: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-02/nixon-s-failed-effort-to-withhold-his-tax-returns

When he tried to deny any problems Nixon said, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.”

Maybe history will repeat itself and some employee of the IRS will leak Trump's returns. Unfortunately, history would repeat in that it will be too late to prevent Trump's election. Let's hope this time it will be in time to prevent Trump's re-election!