Clinton Promises to Produce Income Tax Returns Next Week

In a lengthy and wide-ranging telephone press conference today called by Hillary Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson, Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer, and Policy Director Neera Tanden, I asked the following question:

I've seen reports that Senator Clinton will be producing some kind of financial information next week, but the details have been a little vague. Will Senator Clinton be producing her complete 2000 through 2006 tax returns, including all schedules, next week?

Wolfson responded:

Sen Clinton said ... that she would be producing her tax returns within the week, and we are endeavoring to do just that. And as to - I'm not fully conversant enough to know what the distinction is between schedules and other tax information, so I don't want to give you an answer that is incorrect, but I am quite confident that all of the information that the public needs and that reporters need to make very, very informed judgments about their finances will be made available.... [O]f course they have filed annual financial disclosure forms while Senator Clinton was in the Senate that details [sic] the sources of their income, and obviously tax returns will provide additional information, and I am confident that you and others will have ample opportunity to look at them and if you have followup questions of course we'll be available to answer them, but I am quite confident that all information that is necessary to make very good judgments about their finances will be made available.

I asked a followup:

Scanning and posting tax returns is a fairly simple process. Why is there any delay at all in making her returns available?

Wolfson responded:

You know, why was there delay in Senator Obama's making his returns available....? You know, we'll have them within the week, you'll have an opportunity to look at them, you can turn a skeptical eye to them as you may care to and if you have followup questions about them we'll be happy to answer them, but they'll be available online.... and people will be able to take a look at them.

I admit it: I'm a cynic. I saw no news reports or press releases in which Clinton herself promised to produce tax returns next week - but maybe it just wasn't publicized. I still don't understand why it takes more than 24 hours to have a staffer scan and post tax returns; some bloggers and commentors have articulated fears that the Clintons are using this time to have their returns doctored, and while I don't share those fears, posting the returns immediately after Obama did would have snuffed out any such speculation. It also strikes me as a little funny that someone as well-informed and sophisticated as Wolfson doesn't know what tax schedules are - they're simply the attachments that go with the Form 1040 whenever a taxpayer itemizes his or her deductions or has investment income, as the Clintons (and Wolfson) certainly do. And the length and repetitiveness of his answer makes me mindful of the Queen's comment in Hamlet: "the lady doth protest too much, methinks." As one person has exegised the line, "[s]omeone who is telling the truth [usually does so] ... rather plainly and shortly. Someone who is assuring too much is usually lying either to herself or to the audience"- ie, it implies that "the lady" "will break her word."

But I'm tired of being cynical, and I'm going to trust that the lady's word is good. I'm looking forward to next week, when we'll all know exactly how good it is.

To those who encouraged Clinton to do the right thing by participating in the "Tax Fax" grassroots campaign (outlined on both The Huffington Post and VichyDems) by faxing copies of their own tax returns, with personal info deleted, to Clinton's campaign offices - you can stand down. THANK YOU, and GOOD WORK! BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME

Follow M.S. Bellows, Jr. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/msbellows

Comments

[DesertLight]

What is as interesting to me is, what kind of smoke screen (really meaning attack against Obama) will the Clinton surrogates launch at the same time these, so called, financial statements ( which really are supposed to be her tax returns) are made available?

[KiwisCanFly]

“producing some kind of financial information” and “the details have been a little vague”
sums it up for me. I am skeptical that satisfactory disclosure will be forthcoming, especially with the Paul v Clinton civil trial looming.

MSM doesn’t report much on this as opposed to the Obama/Rezko connection.
Politifact’s Bill Adair said he would check it out. The did check out the Rezko story.

Personally, I want to see if there is any info that shed’s light on the upcoming fraud case, last I heard, proceeding in California, discovery will commence in May with a trial date expected by December 2008.

From an article:
Commencing on August 14, 2000, through the present day- Hillary has denied accepting any money at all from Hollywood Dot com Millionaire Peter Paul through two deceptive articles in the Washington Post, false statements by Hillary's attorney David Kendall, four false FEC reports, false statements to FEC investigators and General Counsel and a false sworn declaration in the civil fraud case that included Hillary as a co-defendant- Paul v Clinton.

[Sloane7]

Hillary Redacted Clinton will provide as little as possible on the tax returns. I say this because initially, she said she would only provide them once she won the primary. Then under pressure, she said she needed until April 15th, implying a general tax date that would not include the previous six years. Then under pressure she said she would provide them in time which hopefully will be this week, but, one can't help but think they are being "reviewed for content" and have been for weeks.

Don't forget - her WH schedules were only made available after JW sued for them. And even then they were heavily edited for content. The Clintons have not been vetted since 1996.

[mrJJ]

Just a financial but one heck of a spread $10 Mill too $50 mill? If your going to go thru them there are about 47 pages stocks, bonds, royalties etc in them

Hillary Clinton (D-NY) - 2006 Politician Profile Net Worth: From $10,360,009 to $51,021,998 Ranks 9th among all members of the Senate. Assets: 10 totaling $10,460,009 to $51,052,000. Liabilities: 2 totaling $30,002 to $100,000.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/candlook.php?txtName=clinton

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00000019&year=2006

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/candlook.php?capcode=h3mpd&CID=N00000019&submit=Submit

[Boringat]

Marc Rich Make Rich??

[MaineMike]

"I am quite confident that all of the information that the public needs and that reporters need to make very, very informed judgments about their finances will be made available"

Since the Clintons feel that the public doesn't need ANY of this information, that's a good indication of what we will get.

What the public needs is the entire tax return (as filed with the IRS) including the schedules and statements.

[fixbone]

i know this is hilary bashing but i could produce my tax returns in a matter of minutes, copies are in file cabinet in our study and guess what my accountant also has a copy. the rest of you who are still using thinking with their brains can fill in the rest.

[PingMama]

I find it amazing that Wolfson doesn't know the difference between Schedules and other tax information. He's setting us up for disappointment. He talked to us like children, as if we are too stupid to know what he's up to.

Just wait and see; no schedules will be released, or only a few.

Schedules tell the WHOLE story

[furion4865]

Does anyone actually believe the Clintons didn't have their tax returns doctored by someone working inside of the IRS? It takes thirty minutes to go to Kinkos and make a copy of your tax returns, so why has it taken the Clintons over six months? I'm betting that the Clintons don't want people to find out how they parlayed their time in the White House into a couple hundred million dollars. Furthermore, with all that new found wealth, I'll bet their charitable contributions are considerably less than Obama's. And you know they don't want the masses to find out how closely aligned Hillary and Bill are with multinational/Arab corporations.

[GoCards1978]

Why would they want to change their dissembelling ways now? Not even with a gun to their heads...

[DavidK08]

The public needs 100%. Not one line less.

When you have ultra rich people threaten Pelosi on your behalf, you need to show that you haven't and wont be indebted to them. That letter is worse'er,er than 5 mil to your campaign.

100% or let the Bullshit excuses fly.

[samuraijack]

The Clintons are stocking up on sharpies to redact certain information, then the returns will be released. By the way, Carville has been on a steady stream of raw meat now for two weeks. He will be released upon the press soon. Get your shots.

[ScandalousCandice]

I wonder if this will be like her White House records with passages blocked out. Yeah I know they said it was to protect certain names but whatever.

I will believe she will show us her tax returns when she actually produces them. My guess is that there will be nothing in them important, causing people to ask what the hell was the big deal anyway. Why make us wait for nothing? Is this how long it takes to manufacture records?

A day late and a dollar short on this issue.

[KDH]

Maybe they're too busy dealing with all the faxes of tax returns from bloggers, that were sent in to Clinton's campain offices. Some people will never grow up. What a cheap and tawdry stunt. I'll bet the perpetrators are giggling like a bunch of 3rd graders who put gum on someone's chair.

[M.S. Bellows, Jr. - Huffpost Blogger]

This is important; I want to make it clear that the "tax fax" campaign was more responsible than KDH makes it sound -- and apparently more effective:

Even after Obama posted his returns, Clinton said she wouldn't produce hers until 4/19. Then 13,000+ people checked out the "tax fax" one day, some percentage sent faxes -- and immediately she moves things up by nearly a month.

I don't know how many sent faxes, and I don't know for certain what prompted her to change, but it wasn't pressure from the mainstream media (there was none) -- so maybe grassroots democracy helped her open up.

Am I "giggling like a 3rd grader?" No, but anytime I see a flicker of life in Lincoln's government of/by/for the people, I permit myself to smile. Briefly.

Also, the "tax fax" post made it very clear that people should NOT fax her Senate offices, and said:

"Do your best to fax a local campaign office, not the national one. That way, the load will be spread among many fax machines, rather than jamming up a few important ones and making them unusable..­. Again: we're sending a message, not doing a dirty trick by jamming her lines. Contact information for Clinton's various campaign offices can be found...

So: responsible yes, effective maybe, cheap and tawdry not so much.

[GoodGuysandBadGuys]

cheap and tawdry?

it's good clean activism. and frankly, if the candidate was more forthcoming then it wouldn't be necessary. what is the purpose of keeping tax returns secret? who is the candidate that talks about how "vetted" they are? the same one who has kept her tax returns secret. vetted, yeah right.

[Opinionater]

A week to do what? Still waiting for those tax returns, Sen. Clinton. Sleep all night, you don't have to answer the phone.

[Antisana]

At the end of the day Hillary is like any other American who wants to build a nest egg for retirement. The only problem with Hillary's income is that it was most probably obtained through questionable ties to benefactors of both Bill and herself. Such financial entanglements truely question the veracity of Hillary's so-called vision for economic equality for all. How despicable !

[ThomH]

So HuffPo is among the baying hounds yelping for Hillary's tax returns, and this post also gets in a dig about Obama's.

Must be that McCain gets no mention because he long ago published his and there's nothing there, right?

That's what I thought till I came across this jawdropper:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200803140010

What gives? Is this all as one-sided as it looks, or am I missing something?

[M.S. Bellows, Jr. - Huffpost Blogger]

Another commentor asked about this earlier. My own blog, VichyDems http://vichydems.blogspot.comm) is mainly aimed at helping ID Democratic politicians who do more to help big corporations, the D.C. status quo and the Republicans than they help advance progressive causes -- and then helping more progressive challengers beat them in primaries. For that reason, I'm not focused on D vs. R (plenty of other sites do that), but D v D. In this case, one D (tardily or not) put his tax returns online and the other D was planning to stall for another month -- to a date that wouldn't guarantee that Pennsylvania voters would have complete information before they had to vote.

That's not good democracy, and it's the kind of thing I especially dislike in primaries, where the candidates should go out of their way to be open to their own party's constituents and courteous and fair to their fellow party members and not play hide the ball or go on the attack. So I started the "tax fax."

Should the mainstream media focus more on the larger race? Sure. Should I do a similar campaign about McCain's returns? Maybe. But all I was trying to do here, and in my question to Wolfson, was balance things out in this primary.

Oh -- and the only slam on Obama in this post came from the Clinton campaign, not from me.