The Democratic National Committee is blaming routine website maintenance for the disappearance of President Biden’s tax returns from his campaign website.
The president’s federal and state tax runs from 2016 to 2018 have, since July, been unavailable for public view on JoeBiden.com, with links directing users to a donations page for the Democratic Party instead.
Mr. Biden’s returns from 2019 remained available on the site.
“Last summer, in the course of regular website maintenance, a couple of links to previous tax returns were broken,” DNC spokesman Ammar Moussa told The Washington Times.
The links were restored Tuesday.
Mr. Biden’s tax records, which he released in 2020 while running for president, always had been available on disclosures.org.
Democrats have long pressured former President Donald Trump to release his tax returns.
Last month, the Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee released six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns, capping a years-long fight by the former president to keep the records from view.
The disappearance of Mr. Biden’s tax forms from JoeBiden.com became the subject of online speculation after Breitbart news reported Sunday that Hunter Biden paid $49,910 per month in rent while living at his father’s Delaware residence.
In the report, the outlet noted that “Joe Biden’s 2017 tax return on Schedule E only listed $19,800 in ‘rents received.’ In 2018, Biden listed no rents received.”
Breitbart cited a background check form signed by Hunter Biden in 2018 that was unearthed by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.
Ms. Devine cautioned against “wild speculation” in a post on Twitter containing a photograph of the form. She said the rent payment listed on the form likely referred to the monthly rent Hunter Biden’s law firm paid for its office in Washington.
On Monday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted the alleged rent payments, and accused Mr. Biden of attempting to hide the source of his wealth.
“Joe Biden has never had a private sector job. For more than 50 years, he has worked at your expense for the U.S. government. Yet somehow he’s gotten rich in the process,” Mr. Carlson said Monday night. “How did Joe Biden do that? Well, Joe Biden does not want you to know.”
“Joe Biden.com no longer links to Joe Biden’s tax returns for the years 2016 to 2018,” he said. “As of tonight, those links have been deactivated.”
Those links had been down since July. Mr. Moussa said they were alerted to the broken links following Mr. Carlson’s report.
“Those links are fixed now, and we look forward to Donald Trump and every 2024 GOP aspirant releasing their own tax returns,” Mr. Moussa said.
Source:Washington Times
