WASHINGTON, D.C. July 12 (DPI) – There’s a good chance – a better than even chance, say many pundits – that computer hackers will gain access to Donald Trump’s tax returns by election day. Such a disclosure would likely bury any hopes of the presumptive Republican nominee of winning the general election, since his tax returns would 1) provide a full accounting of all the failed enterprises over his career, and  2) likely reveal a man not with vast riches, but with a highly leveraged personal balance sheet and a dubious valuation of his personal brand.

The internet has long been speculating that hackers will access Trump’s taxes, which almost every political analyst agrees would change his supporters’ perception of him.  Parody and satire sites have been crowing about the possibility for months.

There are good reasons to believe that Trump’s tax returns will be made public in the course of the campaign. For starters, no previous major-party candidate for the presidency has held back his personal tax filings; not doing so creates and widens a credibility gap.  Also, there are many people in government – including in the IRS – who would be only too happy to leak the information, or perhaps even assist third parties in accessing them.

Trump, for his part, says he has no plans to release his returns, insisting that tax returns don’t reveal any meaningful information about him. That of course begs the question as to why he would continue to stonewall on their release.