If Romney had already released his tax returns ... then he'd have already released his tax returns

They must have gotten their Romneys confused. Greg Sargent points to the most hilarious spin yet coming from Mitt Romney surrogates: the claim that he's already released his tax returns.

Asked by Ryan Lizza whether Romney should release his returns, [Utah GOP Rep. Jason] Chaffetz said (emphasis mine): 'I think he has released them.'

This claim sounded familiar. And sure enough, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer was pressed on MSNBC yesterday on the tax records, and he said (emphasis mine): 'The accusations have been proven completely false. The Governor has released his tax records.'

Uh, sure, for 2010. And that's it. Nothing else other than estimate for 2011. The 1990s? Black hole. The 2000s? Black hole.

There's no doubt that Romney is annoyed by the growing demands to release his return, but this isn't about annoying him. From the 2010 return alone, we learned about twenty different previously undisclosed investments, seven of which were overseas, including the infamous Bermuda corporation that Romney denied knowing about despite having created it in 1997, six years before creating his so-called "blind trust."

At a minimum, Romney's secrecy demonstrates a level of arrogance and sense of entitlement that nobody in their right mind wants to see in a president. As Joe Biden said today at the La Raza annual conference, Mitt Romney wants Latinos to show their papers ... but he won't show his. Given all the legitimate questions that have been raised about his tax returns and financial records, that's a remarkable double standard.

We don't know what Mitt Romney is hiding, and we probably won't know what he's hiding until and unless he releases his returns to the public. And until and unless he does, we're probably going to see more surrogates try to claim that he's already released the returns, because nobody'not even Obama-bashing Republicans'is going to defend Romney's secrecy on the merits.