Turns out Bernie Sanders really is a man of the people.
Just as millions of Americans are scrambling to file their taxes for the April 15 deadline, Bernie Sanders has promised to release his financial statements on Friday — just in time for Tax Day.
“We will release our taxes,” Sanders told a cheering crowd during Thursday’s CNN debate in Brooklyn, New York. “Jane [Sanders] does our taxes, we’ve been a little bit busy lately, you’ll excuse us.”
Moderator Wolf Blitzer then pressed Sanders for more specifics.
“You’ve been asked for weeks and weeks to release your taxes.”
Sanders interrupted him before he could finish his question, saying, “We’ve got one that’s coming out tomorrow.”
Blitzer then asked, “Which one?”
Sanders promised to release 2014 income statements and said he’d eventually release other years as well. But warned voters not to get too excited.
“They are very boring tax returns,” the Vermont senator said. “No big money from speeches, no major investments. Unfortunately I remain one of the poorer members of the United States Senate and that’s what that will show.”
“What’s taking so long?” Blitzer asked. “You just have to go to the filing cabinet, make a copy and release them.”
That line got huge cheers from the crowd.
Sanders gave the same answer he always gave. His wife Jane does the taxes.
It took no time for Thursday’s Democratic debate to get particularly nasty, with Sanders and Hillary Clinton often screaming over each other.
Both candidates came out swinging in what has been dubbed as one of the most pivotal debates of the 2016 primary campaign.
Sanders hit Clinton over Iraq and her willingness to take large sums from big banks. Clinton hit back, attacking Sanders for recently questioning her qualifications, saying she’s been called “a lot of things in my life, that was a first.”
Clinton also said Sanders did not have an answer as to how he plans to break up big banks, a central theme of his campaign.
Thursday’s face-off was the first Democratic debate in five weeks and comes just days before the crucial New York primaries with 291 delegates at stake.