Steven Mnuchin claims 2016 Trump voters 'knew he wasn't releasing his tax returns.' Trump said otherwise.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin needs a lesson in recent history.

After officially denying the House Oversight Committee's request for President Trump's tax returns last week, Mnuchin appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday to discuss an unrelated topic. Except the tax returns inevitably came up, and when they did, Mnuchin made a provably false claim about Trump's commitment to releasing them.

In Wednesday's hearing, Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Co.) asked Mnuchin to explain how the "tradition of other presidents releasing their tax returns" factored into Mnuchin's rejection of the House's tax return subpoena. "It didn't," Mnuchin answered, and went on to say "the American public knew that [Trump] wasn't releasing his tax returns prior to voting for him and they made that decision."

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Here's the thing: The American public didn't know that. Back in 2014, Trump told an Irish TV station that "if I decide to run for office, I'll produce my tax returns, absolutely. I'd love to do that." He gave several similar remarks up until Sept. 2016, CNN documents. Trump then started claiming he was "under a routine audit" and that he couldn't release his returns until it ended. As of last month, Trump was still claiming that audit was still underway, though the IRS commissioner quickly made it clear there's no rule stopping Trump from releasing his returns anyway.