WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declined to comment Tuesday on reports in a new book that his source for a claim about Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s taxes was Jon Huntsman Sr.
“I haven’t said anything and don’t intend to,” he told reporters at a press conference.
In July of 2012, Reid said in an interview with the Huffington Post that a Bain investor had told him that Romney “didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years.”
Reid repeatedly defended the claim throughout the campaign.
According to “Double Down,” an account of the campaign by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann that came out Tuesday, Reid’s source for the claim was Huntsman Sr., whose son, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., made a short-lived and unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination. The New York Times first reported the claim.
Huntsman Sr. denied that he was the source, calling it “ridiculous.”
“It’s so ridiculous that people associate my name with Mitt Romney’s tax returns, like I would have interest in it or know about it,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune.
Reid would only say: “They didn’t get the information from me.”
