Trump cited an ongoing audit, as well as his belief that voters don’t care, though every party nominee since 1976 has released at least some returns prior to an election.
"There's nothing to learn from them," Trump told The Associated Press.
On Sunday, Trump had promised to release his tax returns as soon as the auditors finished. In 2012, Trump strongly criticized Mitt Romney for not releasing his tax returns, urging the Republican nominee for US President to do so quickly. Trump later claimed to have personally reviewed Romney’s tax returns, declaring them “very honorably done.”
As ThinkProgress noted on Wednesday, it is possible that the candidate may be reluctant to release them because he is nowhere near as wealthy as he portrays himself to be.
“One imagines that if Trump’s returns validated his business success he’d be eager to release them,” Judd Legum wrote. “Or he could have something else to hide. We may never know.”
During the interview, Trump confirmed that he had narrowed his field of running mate possibilities down to five or six people, though he will not announce his pick until the Republican National Convention in July.