THE WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE: As soon as the first Maddow tweet went out touting the tax forms and promising a segment with David Cay Johnston, the White House issued a pre-emptive whine about "illegally published" tax returns. This was unusual because the White House has been slow to respond to allegations or ignores them all together. But Tuesday night, they seemed to have a canned response ready to go. Veteran reporters who covered Trump on the campaign trail said the language of the statement points to being written by Donald Trump, not an aide.

And David Cay Johnston isn’t some random reporter. He’s a Pulitzer-Prize investigative reporter who wrote the best-selling book, The Making of Donald Trump. He’s been digging around in Donald Trump’s corporate records for years. Now Trump gets to publicly bash two of his primary nemeses: Rachel Maddow, who’s been reporting on his numerous Russian connections and David Cay Johnston, who wrote a best-seller about Trump’s shady business practices.

x Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, "went to his mailbox" and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS! Ã¢ÂÂ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017

CLIENT COPY: The Rachel Maddow Show and David Cay Johnston have provided a PDF copy of the two-page tax form. On the second page of the form, the form is clearly marked “client copy.” That means this did not come from the IRS. This could likely only come from Donald or Melania Trump.

THE TAX RETURN APPEARED FAVORABLE TO TRUMP: By releasing a statement so quickly, the Trump White House immediately confirmed the tax return was real. The return and Trump’s own statement reveal Donald Trump paid $35 million in taxes in 2005. He suffered heavy financial losses before and after 2005, so this would have been a very favorable year for his tax return to be released. Even sometime Donald Trump allies said the fact this is the year that was leaked seems too suspicious to ignore.

x This one tax return is not bad for him because he cherry picked one return from over a decade ago and had it leaked to the press. https://t.co/P5cMuApGVe Ã¢ÂÂ Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 15, 2017

THE TIMING OF THE LEAK: At least for the night, the conversation shifted away from the disastrous Trumpcare plan that is projected to take away insurance from 24 million people. It also dampened the news that FBI Director James Comey may go public with information on whether the Trump-Russia probe exists or not.

What do you think Trump would prefer the nation and the world be talking about last night? His disastrous healthcare plan? His connections to Russian mobsters, oligarchs and other shadowy Russian figures that may have had an influence on our election? That may still be influencing Donald Trump in the White House? Or would he rather the country be talking about his one successful real estate year where he actually paid taxes? As Joe Scarborough notes, the answer is painfully obvious:

x The Trump camp released one positive tax return to distract from Russia hearings and the Trumpcare meltdown. That's painfully obvious. https://t.co/NLBVPJhwg6 Ã¢ÂÂ Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 15, 2017

See more of the Rachel Maddow discussion with David Cay Johnston and Chris Hayes on the mysterious tax returns that showed up in Johnston’s mail: