Hillary Clinton mocked some of the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Donald Trump Russia collusion witch hunt during an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday night, calling for China to find and release the president’s long-sought-after tax returns.
Speaking with Rachel Maddow, one of cable news’ biggest propagators of the Russia collusion hoax, Clinton turned the tables on one of Trump’s famous (infamous?) campaign lines when he asked Russia to find Clinton’s private emails, saying: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
Within hours, Russian military intelligence agents “targeted Clinton’s personal office for the first time” and “sent malicious links targeting 15 emails accounts,” including one belonging to one of Clinton’s aides, whose name was redacted from the Mueller report.
Per USA Today:
Clinton offered a hypothetical to Maddow: A Democratic candidate for the 2020 election comes on her show and says, “China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns. I’m sure our media would richly reward you.”
“Now, according to the Mueller report, that is not conspiracy because it’s done right out in the open,” Clinton pointed out, adding that in the hypothetical scenario if, “within hours, all of a sudden, the IRS offices are bombarded with incredibly sophisticated cyber tools looking for Trump’s tax returns and then extracts them and then passes them to whatever the new WikiLeaks happens to be, and they start being unraveled and disclosed, nothing wrong with that.”
She sarcastically added that “if you’re going to let Russia get away with what they did and are still doing,” why not “have a great power contest and let’s get the Chinese in on the side of somebody else.”
“Just saying that shows how absurd the situation we find ourselves in is,” Clinton said.
Trump’s responses to Mueller’s team were in written form, and he said his comment was a joke and meant “in jest and sarcastically,” and that his intent was apparent to “any objective observer.”
Meanwhile, Trump is the first president in modern history who has been unwilling to release his tax returns, citing multiple times an ongoing audit. The IRS says it’s perfectly fine for him to release his returns while under audit but he has refused to do so, and Democrats have been going hot and heavy to try and get them since they took control of the House in January.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., used an obscure law allowing select members of Congress to review individual tax returns for legislative purposes, including oversight related to federal tax laws.
The Treasury Department, headed by Trump appointee Steve Mnuchin, has refused to turn them over and has missed two deadlines thus far. Mnuchin said he will wait for guidance from the Justice Department before turning them over.
Mnuchin has said in letters to Neal that he has concerns about releasing the returns, and accused the Democrats of skirting the law in order to obtain the returns for political purposes.