The White House on Tuesday reported that the president of the United States paid $38 million in taxes on an income of $150 million in his 2005 tax return.

The government disclosed the information ahead of an upcoming report by television network MSNBC, which announced Tuesday it had obtained part of Donald Trump’s tax returns and intended to reveal it.

“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” the White House said, referring to MSNBC, in a statement.

During his election campaign, Trump said he was postponing the release of his tax returns as they were being audited, but afterwards refused to disclose them.

As a result, he broke the tradition of releasing tax returns that all White House candidates have done in the last four decades as a sign of transparency towards the electorate.

Weeks before the election, The New York Times newspaper published Trump’s 1995 tax return, which found that the now-president would have managed to avoid paying federal income taxes for two decades after declaring a $916 million loss. (All legally of course)

The White House argued in a statement that before being elected president, Trump “was one of the most successful businessmen in the world” who tried to “pay no more tax than legally required.”

The government added that construction, Trump’s core business, suffered “large scale depreciation” in 2005 and thus justified the president’s tax payment.

Beyond the content of the leaked documents, the government accused the media of being “dishonest” and warned that it was “totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns.”

The tax return released by MSNBC was obtained by David Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist.

Johnston said the copy of Trump’s 2005 tax return anonymously appeared in his mailbox and raised the possibility that Trump’s own network may have leaked it for the benefit of its own interests. EFE