Romney chides Trump on releasing tax returns

Mitt Romney emerged from political hibernation on Wednesday and issued a challenge to Donald Trump: Show us your taxes.

Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, raised serious questions about Trump, the party’s apparent front-runner for the nomination this year, suggesting that there was most likely something unseemly in his tax returns and that perhaps the New York businessman was not as rich as he likes to let on.

“Frankly, I think we have good reason to believe that there’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes,” Romney said in an interview with Fox News.

Asked what he meant, Romney shared some theories: “Either he’s not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is, or he hasn’t been paying the kind of taxes we would expect him to pay, or perhaps he hasn’t been giving money to the vets or to the disabled like he’s been telling us he’s been doing.”

Mainstream Republicans have grown increasingly nervous that Trump will be the party’s nominee. Romney expressed little hope that Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida or Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas could break through.

“Donald Trump has the clearest path to become the Republican nominee,” he said in some of his most expansive public comments on the state of the campaign. “I think for the other people still in the race, their path is becoming a slimmer and slimmer opening, and they’re having a difficult time communicating to their supporters just how they could become the nominee.”

This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 12:13 AM with the headline "Romney chides Trump on releasing tax returns."