Rachel Maddow reveals part of Trump's 2005 tax return

A portion of President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated tax returns were finally made public Tuesday night, two pages from his 2005 return showing he’d made $150 million and paid less than 4 percent or $5.3 million in federal income tax, according to investigative reporter David Cay Johnston.

The pages also show that Trump paid $31 million in the so-called “alternative minimum tax,” an additional tax wealthy individuals or corporations with lots of deductions or tax loopholes are forced to pay.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Johnston, a tax expert and investigative reporter, first obtained the returns and then handed them over to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show. On MSNBC Johnston said the portion of the tax return was mailed to him anonymously. The returns could have even come from Trump himself, Johnston said, noting that Trump is known to have leaked documents to the press earlier in his career.

Maddow caused a stir on Twitter Tuesday night when she teased information about Trump’s returns, tweeting that she would reveal information Trump’s 2005 tax return on her show at 9 p.m. By the first commercial break, however, she still had not publicly released the returns.

Before Maddow’s show even began, the White House began responding to the allegations.

“Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars,” the White House said in a statement. “As well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that.”

In 2005, Trump was at the helm of his reality television show on NBC, “The Apprentice,” for the second season. Trump has refused to release his tax returns to the public for more than a year, insisting he’s been under audit by the IRS (which wouldn’t prevent him from releasing the return). The last time his tax returns made news was in October, when the New York Times reported that Trump might have legally avoided paying federal taxes for nearly two decades.

This marks the first time any part of Trump’s tax returns have been made public since he announced he was running for president two summers ago. Nearly every presidential nominee since the 1970s has released his or her tax returns.