Ongoing leaks anger Trump as tax return published

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump tweeted his frustration with journalists this morning after MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow released two pages of the president’s 2005 tax return Tuesday evening. Trump called the story fake news and questioned whether journalists told the truth about how they got the information.

Journalist David Cay Johnston said he obtained the document from an anonymous source who placed it in his mailbox. Johnston published both pages on his news site DCReport.org and appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss them.

Maddow touted the broadcast ahead of time as a big reveal, tweeting “We’ve got Trump tax returns.” But the information was hardly incriminating: It showed Trump paid $38 million in taxes and took home a $153 million income in 2005.

The White House preemptively released a statement verifying the tax return was real and criticizing Maddow for exploiting the situation.

“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,” the White House statement read.

The document showed Trump reported business losses valued at $103 million in 2005. It also showed Trump paid a 24 percent effective tax rate, which Johnston said was relatively low.

Trump and his wife Melania paid $5.3 million in regular federal income tax, and the rest of their taxes fell under alternative minimum tax payments.

“Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that,” the White House statement continued.

While on-air, Johnston said he did not know who leaked the information to him. Whoever it was could have violated federal privacy laws, but Johnston’s publishing the information given to him is not necessarily illegal. Maddow said the First Amendment protected MSNBC’s right to make the document public.

Trump is the first U.S. president in decades not to publish his tax returns. The president said on the campaign trail he could not do so because the IRS was auditing him. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters last week he was under the assumption the audit was still ongoing.

In October, The New York Times published three pages of Trump’s tax records from 1995, also claiming it got the documents in the mail from an anonymous source. At the time, Trump said the documents were illegally obtained.

Multiple information leaks have frustrated the Trump administration in its first two months. Shortly after Inauguration Day, unauthorized transcripts of phone conversations between Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Australia were made public. Later on, a draft of an executive order about religious liberty starting popping up across news sites.

Most notably, Trump blames illegal leaks and “fake news” for ousting former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

“From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked,” Trump said in February at the height of the Flynn controversy. “It’s a criminal action, criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time before me, but now it’s really going on.”