House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” that The New York Times story on President Donald Trump’s tax returns shows debt that raises “a national security question.”
Pelosi said, “I’m an intelligent person, as you know and I do know that if there is a review of somebody if they’re going to be federally appointed to a job or whatever, if they have outstanding debt, that is an important factor, because that means somebody else has leverage over them. This president appears to have over $400 million in debt, $420 million, whatever it is, million dollars in debt. To whom? Different countries? What is the leverage they have? So for me, this is a national security question. In addition, to which it’s so strange that in 2017 the president paid $750 in federal taxes, and he paid over $300,000 in taxes to other countries that we know of. It may be more. So, again, let’s come back to — we take an oath to protect and defend. This president is a commander-in-chief. He has exposure to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, to whom? The public has a right to know.”
She added, “The question is what does Putin have on the president politically, personally, financially in every way that the president would try to undermine our commitment to NATO, give away the store to Russia, and Syria, try to cast blame on Ukraine for interfering in our elections when he knows full well with the consensus from the intelligence community that it is Russia. The list goes on and on. The annexation of Crimea, and the rest of that that the president turns away from. So, he says he likes Putin and Putin likes him. Well, what’s the connection? We’ll see.”
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