14 DAY TRIAL // The White House handles loads of petitions, but the most popular one has yet to receive a response and will likely never get one - it targets Donald Trump and his famous tax returns.
The White House petition asking Donald Trump to release information about his tax returns now has more signatures than any other petition to be filed on the platform in the five years it’s been up. How many you may ask. Well, at the time of writing, there are 438,000 signatures on the petition titled “Immediately release Donald Trump’s full tax returns, with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance.”
The needed 100,000 signatures, which oblige the White House to offer a response, were gathered within 24 hours of Trump’s inauguration. With over 438,000 signatures, the petition surpasses by a landslide the previous record-owner. With 367,180, a 2012 petition asked the president to legally recognize the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group, the Huffington Post noticed.
Unanswered questions
The petition system launched by Obama has been kept in place, but there’s no indication Trump will follow the rules. After all, his tax returns have been a main topic of debate, with Clinton frequently mentioning how Trump has not released this information and accusing him of cheating the system for years.
Trump himself has said that his tax returns are not necessary for people to vote for him. That may be right, as his supporters may or may not care about such issues, but he is now the president of all of America and nearly half a million people have gone to the trouble of singing a White House petition to see those records.
Whether he will choose to comply or not remains to be seen. According to the rules, if a petition manages to gather 100,000 signatures within 30 days, the White House needs to give an official update within 60 days.
It should also be added that there is still a lot of time left before February 19 when the petition will be closed.