After Kellyanne Conway said Sunday that "the White House response" to repeated requests for Trump's tax returns would be the refusal of their release, WikiLeaks entered the discussion by confirming their interest in publishing the documents themselves:
The Trump team's refusal, WikiLeaks added, is "even more gratuitous than Clinton concealing her Goldman Sachs transcripts." Those transcripts were allegedly released in October, with NPRreporting that WikiLeaks had made available "what appear to be transcripts of three paid appearances Clinton made at events held by the investment banking firm in 2013." The alleged transcripts' release preceded the 2016 presidential election by mere weeks.
"The White House response is that he's not going to release his tax returns," Conway told George Stephanopoulos on This Week Sunday. "We litigated this all through the election. People didn't care. They voted for him. And let me make this very clear, most Americans are very focused on what their tax returns will look like while President Trump is in office, not what his look like."
This repeated notion that voters don't care about the contents of Trump's tax returns, however, is simply not true. Though the Whitehouse.gov page saw some potentially alarming changes the day Trump took his oath, the Washington Postnotes that one feature remains very much alive: petitions. And the top petition with nearly 270,000 signatures at the time of this writing? You guessed it! A petition calling for the immediate release of Trump's "full tax returns with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance" has far exceeded its goal of 100,000 signatures.
In response, many are coming together across social media in an effort to arrange a massive protest during the very fitting month of April:
For more on the White House petition, head here.