Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid defended the unsubstantiated charges he made about Mitt Romney’s tax liability as “necessary” during an interview on Nevada public radio Wednesday.
Asked by a caller about the “brazen lie” of claiming the former Republican nominee for president hadn’t paid taxes for a decade, Reid took issue with the characterization and said he spoke the “truth”—though he referenced a separate criticism of Romney, that he didn’t release several years of tax returns, as proof. He did not speak to what he claimed on the Senate floor in August 2012: “So the word is out that [Romney] has not paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove he has paid taxes, because he has not.”
Thus, Reid concluded, there were no “brazen lies” in what he once said.
“I did what was necessary. [Romney] fought even giving those two years [of returns] that were meaningless because he was already running for president and all of his financial dealings where he became an extremely wealthy man—we were unable to see any of that. You can brand it anyway you want, but it was no brazen lies, it was the truth,” Reid told KNPR.
In September, Reid called the baseless accusation that Romney hadn’t paid taxes “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
Reid, whose Senate tenure is coming to a close, added that he hadn’t firmed up post-congressional career plans yet, but said he had “a number of offers … national in scope and Nevada-based.”
More here.
