HRC Blog

What’s Mitt Hiding?

July 17, 2012 by Dan Rafter, Online Campaigns Manager

Questions are mounting over why exactly Mitt Romney won’t release his tax returns from earlier than 2010. Previous tax filings Romney released earlier this year showed some big donations to anti-LGBT groups including the Massachusetts Family Institute and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty – we also know he’s been a big contributor to the National Organization for Marriage.

The Romney campaign appears to have decided the damage over their candidate not releasing details of his financial interactions is preferable to what might actually be in those documents, which raises a big question: What could possibly be in those previous filings that the Romney campaign thinks is so damaging?

Conservatives are among those calling on Romney to make his tax returns available. They include former RNC chairman Michael Steele, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, conservative mag Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and columnist George Will. Former McCain ’08 campaign manager Steve Schmidt tells TPM he never even saw Romney’s returns during the VP vetting process four years ago.

Conservative strategist Matthew Dowd may have put it best in a recent appearance on ABC’s “This Week” –

There’s obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, ‘Have at it,’…so there’s obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something.

Learn more about Romney’s shady record at www.hrc.org/mittnmatch.

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