(CNN) Start here: There is absolutely nothing stopping Donald Trump from authorizing the release of his past returns.

Not that people don't care to see them, as Kellyanne Conway has said

And not, as Trump said today, because the decision is up to his lawyers.

Asked whether he would instruct the IRS commissioner to comply with a request by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, for his tax returns from 2013 through 2018, Trump offered on Thursday: "They'll speak to my lawyers and they'll speak to the Attorney General."

Which is a) not an answer to the question and b) is totally meaningless. Trump is the President. If he wanted the returns released to Neal, they would be in the Massachusetts Democrat's hands within a matter of days.

The simple fact -- and this has been obvious to anyone paying attention for the last several years -- is that Trump made the decision at some point early in his 2016 campaign that the flack he would take for not releasing any returns would be nothing compared to what would happen if he did release them.