President can’t have it both ways on his taxes

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 20, 2020

When it comes to Trump’s tax data, he’s attempting to play both sides: president and private citizen. The Treasury refuses to comply with providing the returns on grounds that it is an invasion of an individual citizen’s privacy. The president and his attorneys are claiming that he doesn’t have to comply because he is president and therefore immune to investigations into his personal interests until he no longer holds office. The catch here is that, this president has refused to divest himself from his business interests making them deserved of public scrutiny. So which is it? Is he the president or a private citizen?

This refusal to divest makes those private interests, and their records, a matter of urgent public concern. What conflicts of interest might this private citizen who has brought his own interests with him into public office have? We need to know, as the answers could directly affect the well being of our republic and quite possibly the security of it as well. We need to know whose interests the president is representing; ours or his own. If the Supreme Court sees it in any other way, we are truly lost.

Berb Kidder

Everett