Is the presidential race actually between Wikileaks and the IRS?

Both sides are clearly nervous about possible revelations before the November election — or even before the first presidential debate on September 26. Donald Trump Jr., the candidate’s son, admitted to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review last week that the real reason for the non-release of the tax returns had to do with their political impact, rather than any ongoing IRS audit. Speaking to the paper’s editors, Trump Jr. said, “Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create . . . financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from [my father’s] main message.” In other words, the returns could reveal that his father’s wealth is substantially less than the $10 billion he claims, or that he makes fewer charitable contributions than he has stated, or that he takes advantages of tax loopholes and often pays zero or little in taxes.

Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican, had his own explanation for why the campaign won’t release any tax returns. with any release. “There would be all kinds of misinterpretations of that and maybe some real interpretations of that between now and November,” he told CNN last Wednesday. “That would be the only discussion we’d have.”

So instead the Trump campaign will take its chances that the returns won’t leak. Mainstream media outlets are already sending out everything but engraved invites for someone to leak the returns. Last week, CNN reported that both Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, and Bob Woodward, an associate editor at the Washington Post, told a Harvard symposium they would go to jail to protect any sources who gave them the tax returns.