David Cay Johnston Is The Reporter Who Received Donald Trump’s Tax Returns

Talk about a pre-emeptive move! Donald Trump finally released some of his tax returns from 2005 after Rachel Maddow got ahold of the them and announced she would broadcast the information on her MSNBC show March 14.

DCReport.org obtained two pages of Trump’s 2005 federal 1040 form that MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” dedicated its hour-long program to.

Celebs have been freaking out over the chance to see Trump’s tax returns after he refused to release the returns during his campaign.

In its statement, the White House said publication of the tax details was illegal, but Maddow said the US Constitution protected her right to release the information belonging to the president.

Although it has been guarded about Trump’s tax returns, the White House did acknowledge that Trump paid $38 million in 2005 after earning $150 million in income, with a tax rate of 25 percent and had a write down of $105 million.

A White House official confirmed the authenticity of Johnston’s document in a statement, though a statement from the official included Trump’s payroll taxes to bring the total paid to $38 million.

The taxes were revealed on MSNBC by Rachel Maddow, who defended the legality of publishing the President’s tax return based on the first amendment.

But Trump has yet to release recent returns becoming the first US president to do so since Richard Nixon.

Trump is the only president since the Watergate era to never have released any of his tax returns during his campaign. However, many essential questions remained glaringly unanswered, including the source of the president’s income.

It has been reported that Trump posed as his own publicist under the names “John Miller” and “John Barron”.

Johnston speculated that the documents may have come from Trump himself. Maddow began by discussing a fascination of hers in recent weeks, Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch who bought a property from Trump in Florida at a markup of tens of millions of dollars back in 2008.

The Washington Post could not independently verify the 2005 return, but a statement from the White House indicated that it is authentic.

Since winning the election, Trump has continued to be pushed to reveal his tax returns as the Democrats have attempted to make them a matter of national security.