Harry Reid claims Mitt Romney paid not a dime in taxes ten years in a row. And then in traditional hypocritical fashion, he blasts Romney for not releasing all his tax returns.
Then when asked to release his own tax returns, Mr. Reid’s spokesman simply says, well, “he’s not running for President.”
First of all, Reid’s so-called source is anonymous, which, in my opinion, makes it null and void. More importantly, though, is his own questionable finances. Reid’s been in public office his entire professional life, and he’s worth as much as $10 million. The National Review’s Betsy Woodruff spells it out, asserting, in part:
In 2004, the senator made $700,000 off a land deal that was, to say the least, unorthodox. It started in 1998 when he bought a parcel of land with attorney Jay Brown, a close friend whose name has surfaced multiple times in organized-crime investigations and whom one retired FBI agent described as “always a person of interest.” Three years after the purchase, Reid transferred his portion of the property to Patrick Lane LLC, a holding company Brown controlled. But Reid kept putting the property on his financial disclosures, and when the company sold it in 2004, he profited from the deal — a deal on land that he didn’t technically own and that had nearly tripled in value in six years.
There’s a hell of a lot more, but, in a nutshell: Reid also benefited off an energy fund that he sold right before an oil tax plunged the shares’ worth by some 40 percent; and his 160-acre slice of land well over doubled in value after he secured $18 million from Congress for a bridge crossing the Colorado river where his land is located. Oh, and here’s a fierce warrier against earmarks (feel free to laugh out loud).
In 2010, senatorial rival Sharron Angle asked Reid how he became rich. His response, actually, seemed pretty honest: “I did a very good job investing.” Uh huh.
