Mike Huckabee slammed Mitt Romney for his critiques of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. | AP Photo Huckabee rips Romney's attack on Trump

Former presidential rival Mike Huckabee laced into Mitt Romney on Thursday, a day after the Republican Party's 2012 nominee resurfaced his criticism of Donald Trump's refusal to release his tax returns.

"I supported Romney, just as I will Trump, despite having serious differences with both. I believe that if you’re a Republican, then you respect the voters’ choice," the former Arkansas governor wrote in a post on his website titled "Romney’s motto 'Do unto Others as has been done unto me.'"


"But I am especially disappointed in Mitt for this latest attack," Huckabee continued. "He’s not only trying to sink his own party’s presumptive nominee, but he’s factually incorrect and he’s making the same unfair attack on Trump that was launched against him in 2012."

Romney alluded to his initial refusal to release his tax returns in a Facebook post Wednesday that otherwise excoriated the party's presumptive nominee's withholding of the documents as "disqualifying."

"Anticipating inquiries regarding my own tax release history, I released my 2010 tax returns in January of 2012 and I released my 2011 tax returns as soon as they were completed, in September of 2012," Romney wrote.

Huckabee wrote that he has "long argued" that candidates should resist calls to release their personal tax forms. If Trump does not release his tax returns by Election Day, he will be the first candidate to forgo the practice since President Gerald Ford released a summary in 1976.

Besides, Huckabee added, the average voter stands to learn little about Trump from the documents but they could be a "treasure trove for opponents to lift items out of context to make him look shady."

"Early in my political career, I volunteered to release all my tax returns. Why not? I had nothing to hide. If anything, I was probably too honest and paid too much tax. It sure felt like it! But I learned that honesty and good intentions don’t count for squat in politics," Huckabee wrote. "My opponents still twisted things out of context to try to make me look like a tax cheat. You can do that to anyone because nobody understands the tax code, not even the IRS agents in charge of enforcing it."

"If Mitt Romney wants to talk about taxes while showing the world what a real Republican stands for, he should stop trying to destroy the party’s presumptive nominee and instead aim his fire at a more appropriate target: the 70,000-plus-page tax code," Huckabee concluded.