OPINION: The White House Rule: No Tax Returns, No Job

As ethics counsel to the current president and his predecessor, we scrutinized their tax returns before they were released every year. We also worked with our colleagues to review many tax returns of presidential nominees for cabinet and other positions. Based on the few pages of Donald J. Trump’s 1995 tax returns that have become public, we have come to the conclusion that no one in his position would have been nominated, much less confirmed by the Senate, during either of the administrations we served. The same is true of any modern administration of a president from either party.