A small portion of one of Donald Trump’s tax returns showed the president paid $36.5 million in income taxes in 2005, according to leaked documents. So, who leaked the information? It’s not clear but some people are suggesting it could have been Trump himself.
On Tuesday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow hyped up a scoop about Trump’s tax information after receiving two leaked pages, which were obtained by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston through the mail.
WATCH: Trump calls leaked tax return “fake news” despite confirming details of the tax return a day before
During the broadcast, Johnston said the pages of the tax return were mailed to him anonymously.
“Came in the mail over the transom. And there is absolutely nothing improper about journalists, if you haven’t solicited something, getting it over the transom,” the journalist told Maddow. “And by the way, let me point out it’s entirely possible that Donald sent this to me.
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“Donald Trump has over the years leaked all sorts of things,” Johnston said, adding “when he thinks it’s in his interests.”
Johnston made reference to the “very sleazy girl-on-girl pictures of the first lady in the New York Post” suggesting the images may have come from Trump. He also made mention of the tax records obtained by The New York Times last year in which the newspaper reported that Trump had lost $915,729,293 in 1995 and could have gone 18 years without paying federal income taxes as a result.
As The Associated Press points out, Trump acted as his own spokesperson in the 1990s, sometimes identifying himself as John Miller. He would apparently call newspapers to offer details about the real estate mogul’s personal life. The Washington Post reported it was actually Trump, posing as his own publicist. In later years Trump denied it, but he had owned up to it at the time, describing the Miller calls as a “joke gone awry,” according to the Post.
On social media, many were quick to point out that one of the two pages of Trump’s return had a stamp that reads “client copy,” suggesting that either Trump himself or someone close to him “leaked” the documents.
Just before Maddow went to air Tuesday night, the White House released a statement saying the broadcast was hungry for ratings.
“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” reads a portion of the statement.
The White House also claimed that it is “totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns.”
READ MORE: Donald Trump slams tax return leak, calls it ‘fake news’
On Wednesday, Trump denounced the award-winning journalist as “fake news.”
“Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mailbox’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!” the president tweeted.
Speaking with CNN on Wednesday, Johnston stood by the possibility Trump sent him the tax papers but backed off slightly by saying: “the anger which the White House responded suggests to me not likely, however.”
“It’s when something gets leaked he’s happy about, he doesn’t complain,” the journalist said.
–with files from The Associated Press
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