Reid wouldn't provide any further details on the source of his claim. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Reid: Mitt flap 'nothing to do with me'

LAS VEGAS — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants no sympathy for the heat he’s taking over his unproven accusation about Mitt Romney’s taxes.

“No one should feel sorry for me,” Reid said in Las Vegas on Monday afternoon during a preview of a clean energy summit he’s hosting there Tuesday, even as his incendiary remarks about Romney have turned the GOP magnifying glass onto himself.


“The issue that I raised has nothing to do with me,” Reid told reporters. “It has everything to do with the first presidential candidate in more than 30 years who refuses to show the American people his income tax returns.”

Reid wouldn't provide any further details on the source of his claim that Romney didn’t pay taxes for a decade, or say whether his source will go public.

"I made my statement. The burden is not on me. It's on Romney to produce his income tax returns," Reid told reporters, adding: “This man is running for president. We should know more about him.”

"Listen, Romney can solve this problem very quickly: Produce the tax returns."

The accusation brought Reid a chorus of GOP criticism on Sunday’s talk shows, most famously from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’s denunciation of the majority leader as a “dirty liar.”

Republicans have also made veiled and not-so-veiled hints that they’re prepared for an extended public discussion of Reid’s own finances.

Bring it on, Reid said.

“All you have to do is go look. I file every year, every stock trade, every piece of land I buy, all the money I have, it has the value of my homes, it's got it all there,” Reid said. “So this is really a way to divert attention."

"All my friends have stuck up for me on the Sunday shows and today,” he added. “So I'm confident that the American people believe that a candidate running for president of the United States, they should know if he has money buried in all these foreign accounts.

“It's too bad that you folks haven't focused on his tax returns,” Reid told reporters. “You shouldn't focus on me.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:33 p.m. on August 6, 2012.