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SALT LAKE CITY — Many people may remember a damaging claim Sen. Harry Reid made on the Senate floor in Aug. 2012 that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes for a decade. A new book says the source of a damaging claim was the father of one of Romney's early opponents.
"The word's out that he hasn't paid any taxes for ten years," Reid, D-Nev., said in Aug. 2012. "Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn't."
The New York Times got an advance copy of the new book, "Double Down: Game Change 2012," written by two journalists about the 2012 presidential campaign and claims it says Jon Huntsman Sr. was Reid's source for that information. Huntsman Sr. has long been suspected of starting the no-tax rumor, but has denied it for years.
The Times said the book also calls out Jon Huntsman Jr. for secretly preparing for a presidential run while in China working for President Obama.
Huntsman Friday firmly denied he was a source or had anything to do with revelations about Mitt Romney during the presidential campaign. He said he did not know the authors of the book, nor had he spoken to them. He went on to describe the allegations as "supermarket tabloid trash."
Huntsman, in Salt Lake City Friday to attend an evening gala in honor of people who have contributed to the cause of fighting cancer, said, "I have no way of knowing if Mitt Romney did or didn't pay his taxes."
Mitt Romney repeatedly denied the no taxes claim and a spokesman for Mitt Romney told KSL Friday, "whoever the source was, the information was totally false." Longtime Romney supporter Kirk Jowers, from the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, spoke about it live on KSL Newsradio Friday morning.
"It's the same rumor that surfaced in 2011 and 2012," Jowers said. "And Jon Huntsman Sr. categorically denied it in 2012."
The New York Times reports the book also says the Obama administration looked at replacing Joe Biden on the ticket with Hillary Clinton. The Obama administration as since denied the claim.
