Trump says he'll issue his financial records before 2020 election

WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would release his financial records prior to the 2020 election, a similar pledge he made during his 2016 presidential campaign.

"Bob Mueller, after spending two years and 45 million dollars, went over all of my financial, & my taxes, and found nothing. Now the Witch Hunt continues with local New York Democrat prosecutors going over every financial deal I have ever done," Trump said on Twitter.

"What they are doing is not legal. But I'm clean, and when I release my financial statement (my decision) sometime prior to Election, it will only show one thing - that I am much richer than people even thought," the president said.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller has not said he reviewed Trump's financial records in his investigation into the alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 US election, said a TheHill news daily report.

US Chief Justice John Roberts said on Monday that the Supreme Court had issued a temporary stay of a federal appeals court ruling that granted a House committee access to eight years of Trump's financial records from his accounting firm.

Trump's legal team last week asked the Supreme Court to put a hold on the panel's subpoena, arguing that if the lower court rulings are allowed to stand, any committee of Congress could subpoena any personal information it wants from a president.

In a separate case, Trump's legal team also asked the Supreme Court last week to block a subpoena issued by the New York County District Attorney demanding his accounting firm to turn over eight years of his tax returns to Manhattan prosecutors.

The Supreme Court, which now has five conservatives and four liberals, could decide to consider the two cases together. It's unclear whether the Supreme Court will take up Trump's appeal and there is no deadline for the court to act, according to local media reports.

On the 2016 presidential campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to release his tax returns after audit. Shortly after Trump's inauguration in January, 2017, Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to Trump, told US media that Trump would not release his tax returns, citing voters' indifference to the issue.

While US presidents are not required to release their tax returns, nearly all US presidents had voluntarily released them since 1970s. Many tax experts say Trump is not barred from releasing the information during the audit.

Coinciding with the April 18 deadline for tax returns in 2017, demonstrators in dozens of US cities and towns, including Washington D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Palm Beach, where Trump often spends weekends at his resort Mar-a-Lago, marched to demand that Trump release his tax returns. Some rallies were joined by thousands of people.