(Headline USA) Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, released more of their personal tax returns on Tuesday, just days after a New York Times attack smeared President Donald Trump with a leak of his tax records, which it may have obtained illicitly.
The Bidens’ returns show the couple paid almost $300,000 in federal taxes in 2019, including almost $288,000 in personal income tax. The Bidens reported taxable income of $944,737.
The Times reported that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he was elected president, and again in 2017, his first year in office.
It claimed he paid no federal income taxes for 10 of the 15 years before that.
However, the White House has disputed the information, saying it was both incomplete and misinterpreted the complicated financial structure surrounding his many real-estate holdings and investments.
Trump, who has cited an audit as the reason for not releasing the tax records himself, called the reports “fake news.”
Biden and Trump are set to meet Tuesday night in Cleveland for their first presidential debate, and Trump’s taxes are sure to come up.
The timing of the release raised questions as to whether the Times had collaborated with Biden’s campaign.
Conservative strategist and author Jerome Corsi hinted that even well-known Fox News correspondent Chris Wallace—who is set to moderate Tuesday’s debate, might also have given Biden favorable treatment by providing him in advance with the debate questions.
“He’s being prepared on the exact questions he’s being asked,” Corsi said during an interview on talk-radio station KXEL.
Biden already had released two decades’ worth of his tax returns, in addition to the federal financial disclosures required of him when he was a senator and vice president.
However, some have questioned his records due to the surprising amount he paid during his four decades as a career public-servant.
The Trump campaign released a list of 17 key questions that it wanted Biden to answer during Tuesday’s debate. Some homed in on the questionable business deals that the former vice president and his family made with foreign governments.
A Senate report last week confirmed that the presence of Biden’s son Hunter on the board of the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma likely undermined US policy.
Pro-Russia newspapers in the former Soviet satellite openly mocked Biden for stepping in to force the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating the corruption.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
