Trump Has Donated Presidential Salary to Government Agencies: McEnany

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany holds a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, on Sept. 22, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that reports alleging President Donald Trump paid only $750 in taxes are an attempt to smear the president ahead of the election.

Over the weekend, The New York Times said it obtained Trump’s financial records for 2016 and 2017, saying he paid the amount. Trump pushed back against the allegation, saying that it is a “totally fake” story.

McEnany told Breitbart on Monday that Trump has donated his entire $400,000 salary every year he’s been in office, saying that voters likely won’t care about the NY Times’ claims. She said that he donated more than $1 million of his salary to various government agencies.

“Democrats and the liberal media are desperately trying to smear President Trump ahead of the election, but this trivial attack did not persuade the American people in 2016,” McEnany said. “For four years, the forgotten men and women of America have watched their President sacrifice his eminently successful business career, generously donate his salary, and tirelessly fight for them every single day.”

McEnany added that because Trump hasn’t been running his real estate empire and other businesses over the past several years, he’s suffered financial losses as president.

Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and presidential candidate Joe Biden have ramped up attacks on Trump, with Pelosi claiming Trump’s finances are a “national security” issue. She noted that Trump allegedly has tens of millions of dollars in debt, according to the NY Times article, which could be used to put pressure on him.

“So for me, this is a national security question,” Pelosi said. “The fact that you could have a sitting president who owes hundreds of millions of dollars that he’s personally guaranteed to lenders, and we don’t know who these lenders are,” she said, again suggesting without evidence that Trump is indebted to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Sunday, Trump said he will not release his financial records because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

“It’s under audit. They’ve been under audit for a long time,” he said. “The IRS does not treat me well.”

Such information will be released in due time, he said before adding that it will only be done when the IRS audit is completed.

Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten issued a statement to the NY Times about the reporting, saying that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate.”

“Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015,” Garten told the paper.

Over the past four years, news outlets and various Democrat officials at the state and congressional level have tried to get Trump’s tax returns. They’ve become the subject of a number of legal battles, with cases going to the Supreme Court.