The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[River]

Maybe it can be dissolved after coughing up some heavy fines?

[Dave_LF]

Maybe it can be dissolved after coughing up some heavy fines?

As punishment, the Trump Organization could be fined up to $1.6 million — a relatively small amount for a company of its size, though the conviction might make some of its future deals more complicated.

[N.E. Brigand]

I agree with those asking why the IRS never noticed this crime in the many Trump audits they've supposedly conducted.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This article does a good job describing whu the $1.6 million fine is the least of the Trump Organization's concerns about this verdict.

The Collateral Consequences of the Trump Organization’s Felony Tax Fraud Convictions Could Cause ‘Major Financial Headaches,’ Experts Say

[N.E. Brigand]

"Trump Organization Was Held in Contempt After Secret Trial Last Year" (New York Times)

It was a "one-day contempt trial" in October 2021, a bench trial, that was "held after prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office requested that the company be punished for 'willfully disobeying' four grand jury subpoenas and three court orders enforcing compliance." After being found guilty, the Trump Org. was fined a whopping $4,000.

[N.E. Brigand]

And the House Ways & Means Committee is now in possession of the six years of Donald Trump's tax returns that it first demanded of the U.S. Treasury Department -- as is the Committee's clear right under a century-old law, and as multiple courts have agreed they could do -- in 2019.

Just in time for Republicans to take control of the Committee and bury the returns.

I think Democrats, to prevent that from happening, should redact social security numbers and other personal information and then enter the rest into the Congressional record in the next 34 days.

The Ways & Means Committee will meet behind closed doors on Tuesday -- just 13 days before Republicans take control of the House -- to discuss Donald Trump's tax returns.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who is not necessarily a reliable commentator, says in a tweet responding to Donald Trump Jr. that his father, the former president, is listed in the late Jeffrey Epstein's "black book"; make of that what you will.

[Sunsilver]

Quel supris, as the French say...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee votes to release materials on Trump’s taxes to the public

[N.E. Brigand]

Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee votes to release materials on Trump’s taxes to the public

On a 24-16 party-line vote. That means one Democrat and four Republicans weren't in attendance. While it will take a few days for personal information to be redacted, the Committee apparently is going to release a report on the returns later tonight. More than six years after Trump promised he would release his tax returns once they were audited (which is not something that actually prevents someone from releasing their returns), we'll finally get to see this information and, one hopes, understand why he chose to hide what every other major presidential candidate and president for more than 40 years had made public.

And per some statements by committee members just after the meeting, it seems that, in contravention of a law requiring Presidents' tax returns to be audited, Trump's returns in 2017 and 2018 were not. Or they were not until Chairman Neal requested in 2019 that the IRS send him the returns, as the law clearly required them to do (they managed to stall for more than three and a half years). Only then did the IRS begin to audit Trump's presidential tax returns, and those audits are not yet complete. The IRS has some serious explaining to do. And what that also means is that, despite the fact that it looked like the Committee's claims -- that they needed to see the returns to determine if new legislation was needed to ensure the IRS was doing its job -- were merely pretextual excuses for them to force Trump's tax returns into the public eye, the argument was correct! While there doesn't need to be a legitimate legislative purpose for the Committee to get the returns (the law authorizing the Ways & Means Committee to get the returns doesn't require that), there in fact was one.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas and member of the committee, cited above, also said earlier tonight that the 2017-2018 returns show "tens of millions of dollars" that Trump claimed in exemptions that are not substantiated by supporting documentation. Presumably the IRS is fighting Trump to get that material?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here is a very odd sidelight of the Trump tax story. It turns out that the head of the IRS that refused to turn over Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee had made hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trump properties while he was in office.

Trump’s IRS chief has made hundreds of thousands from Trump properties while in office

[RoseMorninStar]

The corruption is staggering, and yet.. where is the outcry from congress? Republicans? Crickets.

[N.E. Brigand]

Jim Geraghty argues in the conservative National Review that, sure, it turns out the Ways & Means Committee did have a legitimate legislative reason to obtain Donald Trump's tax returns, but the Commitee's decision to release the returns to the public "looks like a middle finger to the former president and to Judge McFadden, for that matter." McFadden is the judge who initially ruled in favor of the Committee and against Trump and the Trump administration. Geraghty goes on to say that if Trump broke the law, that's something for the IRS to handle: neither the Committee nor the public has the ability to penalize Trump. He also points out that the IRS was run by a Barack Obama appointee until November 2017, and by an acting appointee from then until October 2018, so he wants to know why everyone is mad at the man Donald Trump appointed as the permanent commissioner, Charles Rettig: Trump's returns as president began to be audited just six months after Rettig took office. (Rettig remained in that office until last month, by the way.)

It's hard to overstate how slippery Geraghty's column is. I really want to rebut it paragraph by paragraph, and I may do so when I have a little more time.

I will say that Republicans have threatened in recent weeks that if the Democratic-controlled Committee were to release Trump's returns, then Republicans could likewise release Joe Biden's returns. Then they realized that Biden already releases his returns -- just like every other President and major presidential candidate not named Donald Trump has done since the 1970s -- so yesterday some Congressional Republicans threatened instead to release the returns of Supreme Court justices.

Don't threaten me with a good time!

[N.E. Brigand]

From 2015 through 2020, Donald Trump paid just $776,000 in taxes. (That works out to 0.5% of the $154 million in income he reported during those years.)

While Trump was serving as President from 2017 through 2020, his hotels charged the Secret Service at least $1.4 million, nearly twice what he paid in taxes.

- - - - - - - - - -
Rep. Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, told NPR today that "I don't want to pick on President Trump particularly [but after viewing the returns], I couldn't tell [what] he owed other countries. I added up $280 million of unsubstantiated deductions."

[N.E. Brigand]

Jim Geraghty argues in the conservative National Review that, sure, it turns out the Ways & Means Committee did have a legitimate legislative reason to obtain Donald Trump's tax returns, but the Commitee's decision to release the returns to the public "looks like a middle finger to the former president and to Judge McFadden, for that matter." McFadden is the judge who initially ruled in favor of the Committee and against Trump and the Trump administration. Geraghty goes on to say that if Trump broke the law, that's something for the IRS to handle: neither the Committee nor the public has the ability to penalize Trump. He also points out that the IRS was run by a Barack Obama appointee until November 2017, and by an acting appointee from then until October 2018, so he wants to know why everyone is mad at the man Donald Trump appointed as the permanent commissioner, Charles Rettig: Trump's returns as president began to be audited just six months after Rettig took office. (Rettig remained in that office until last month, by the way.)

It's hard to overstate how slippery Geraghty's column is. I really want to rebut it paragraph by paragraph, and I may do so when I have a little more time.

I will say that Republicans have threatened in recent weeks that if the Democratic-controlled Committee were to release Trump's returns, then Republicans could likewise release Joe Biden's returns. Then they realized that Biden already releases his returns -- just like every other President and major presidential candidate not named Donald Trump has done since the 1970s -- so yesterday some Congressional Republicans threatened instead to release the returns of Supreme Court justices.

Don't threaten me with a good time!

And now the House has followed through on the legislative purpose behind the request for Trump's tax returns: they just passed a bill that would require the IRS to do what the IRS had said was its policy (and had been doing every year since the early 1970s until Trump became president): audit a president's tax returns.

More than 200 Republicans voted against this.

I don't know if the Senate will take up this bill before the end of this term.

[N.E. Brigand]

David Cay Johnston, an independent reporter specializing in tax policy who's also written extensively on Donald Trump and who was mailed two pages of Donald Trump's 2005 tax returns in 2017 (Johnston then provided them to Rachel Maddow -- see video below), wrote yesterday that based on his reading of the House Ways & Means Committee's report on Donald Trump's 2015-2020 tax returns (which the committee plans to release on Friday), "Donald Trump knowingly committed dozens of brazen tax frauds during the six years when he ran for office and was President ... This explains why he fought all the way to the Supreme Court in a failed effort to keep his tax information secret."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Remember when Trump claimed that he closed his bank account in China before he ran for president at one of the debates with Biden? What a surprise, he lied!

[N.E. Brigand]

The House Ways & Means Committee has released Donald Trump's tax returns (from 2015-2020). Following this move, Trump released a statement that reads: "The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it's going to lead to horrible things for so many people." (Is he one of those people?) Some folks are surprised to learn from these documents that Trump had a Chinese bank account during the first year of his presidency, but as this CNN piece notes, that had been reported by the New York York Times more than two years ago. One item that is news is that in 2017, Trump reported paying more income tax in other countries than in the United States.

Edited to add: Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post is concerned that the committee is not releasing the IRS audit workpapers for the one mandatory audit known to have been conducted. Also there appears to be a discrepancy between when the committee said that audit was begun and when the IRS says the audit was begun.

Edited further to add: Rampell notes that Trump reported no charitable giving in 2020, despite having said publicly that he would be donating his presidential salary each year. Also, V was not among the "some folks" I referenced above as regards Trump's Chinese bank account; I hadn't seen V's post at that point.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Some folks are surprised to learn from these documents that Trump had a Chinese bank account during the first year of his presidency, but as this CNN piece notes, that had been reported by the New York York Times more than two years ago.

As is pointed out in the tweet that I posted just before your post, what was not confirmed before the release of these returns was that he did in fact have the Chinese bank account during his presidency. The original New York Times article only confirmed that he had had the account, and Trump immediately claimed (in a debate with Biden) that he had closed the account before he ran for president. I think many of us suspected that he lied about that, but now we know for sure.