Trump Refuses To Release His Taxes

There can only be two reasons.

1. He's not worth the $10 billion he claimed, but "only" $200-250 million due to excessive personal and business debt
   
2. His tax rates have been under 12%, possibly closer to 5 or 6%, due to "creative" tax filings

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/05/11/3777219/trump-called-mitt-romney-release-tax-returns-wont-release/

Failure to pay taxes helped bring down Richard Nixon.

I think he doesn't want anyone knowing his true net worth. And he doesn't want people finding out that many of those huge buildings with his name on it do not belong to him; he just leases his name.

This will go all the way to the Supreme Court -- he'll never do it willingly -- and he'll lose in court*.  The results will surprise no one.

The man's a fraud, a cheater, a con man and a sham.

Let's hope, at least, that it makes it through the courts before November 2020.





* - He WILL lose because, although citizens have a right to reasonable privacy, and there is no law that says politicians have to make their tax returns public, Congress DOES have the legal authority to compel release of anyone's tax returns -- regardless of who they are. SCOTUS can't change that without rewriting the laws.

Trump has made the request to SCOTUS and apparently odds are they'll accept it.

Quote :

Pressure on Trump to release his tax returns, which would shed important light on any conflicts of interest he may have, is at a high this week. On Wednesday, an appeals court ruled in a separate case that Congress has the right to access his tax returns.

Given Wednesday’s development, The Washington Post reported, chances are high the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case. However, it cannot make that decision for another month.

So sometime around the first of the year we may find out if SCOTUS sides with the law or with the dictator.

Let's hope Ginsburg makes it that long.  If she passes before the election, SCOTUS will be fucked for 30 years.

SCOTUS has accepted the case(s).

Guess we'll find out soon if John Roberts' animus toward the president still holds.

Quote :

There’s every reason to think that Roberts—conservative, Republican, and lifelong believer in expansive executive power—is not going to want history to remember him as the guy who emptied the ashtrays of a carnival barker president.

Quote :

The court will hold oral arguments in March, with rulings due by the end of June.

Just in time for the conventions.

SCOTUS ruled on July 9 that Mazars must release Trump's financial records to Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance.  He requested a "fast track" resolution, to speed up the normal 25-day delay before their ruling goes into effect, and John Roberts granted it.  He therefore should be receiving the records any day now, if he hasn't quietly already.

What they show will be fascinating.

Throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s, whenever Donald got in trouble, his father Fred Trump bailed him out with non-repayable "loans," totaling over $400 million dollars, according to Mary Trump's book (she had Fred's estate papers, which led to the famous New York Times expose).  Beginning around 1993 however, Fred began suffering the effects of Alzheimer's, and Donald's bailouts became harder and harder to come by.  Donald had to declare bankruptcy six times: Taj Mahal (1991), Plaza Hotel & Casino (1992), Castle Hotel & Casino (1992), Trump Hotels (2004) and Trump Entertainment (2009).  Fred died of pneumonia June 25, 1999, effectively cutting off the bailout money spigot.

Vladimir Putin assumed the leadership of Russia August 9, 1999.

Trump began visiting Moscow in 1996, negotiating for a Trump Tower there.  In the early 2000s he "developed several projects abroad, many of them involving Russian money."

Anyone else see a pattern here?  Donald simply transferred his endless checking account from Fred Trump to Vlad Putin, and kept on losing money like a sailor on leave.

His financial records, going back twenty years, will be verrrry interesting (to quote Artie Johnson).

NoCoPilot wrote:

SCOTUS ruled on July 9 that Mazars must release Trump's financial records to Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance. 

Sounds like Cyrus Vance has The Trump Organizations firmly in his crosshairs.  Let the fur fly! Bank fraud! Tax evasion! Felonies!

Trump may try to -- probably will try to, if I know him -- proactively pardon himself before leaving office. And everyone associated with TTO.

Right now, the presidential pardon power is essentially unlimited.

This sort of thing has not been specifically prohibited because no president in history has been corrupt enough to try to abuse it.

When he tries it it'll be interesting to see who, or how, the opposition mobilizes to prevent it. Would legislation passed now, before the event, prevent it? Would such legislation pass the Senate?

Or would this be a Supreme Court thing? The SC can't proactively rule against such a move (without a case on their docket), but John Roberts has already stated firmly in a couple of rulings that POTUS is "not above the law." Who would have standing, in court, I wonder, to challenge such a pardon, after the fact? Cy Vance?

Interesting legal dilemma. Uncharted territory.

A quora entry. Where you see <> below, it means I snipped something out, generally a graphic that is actually a snippet of the disclosure form.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Trump filed his obligatory annual financial disclosure forms for 2019: Melania has $6k to her name. Trump isn’t a billionaire.
Trump’s stated net worth: about $150 million

Melania’s personal holdings and assets: $1,001 plus a recursively-shelled stake in an LLC controlled by a pass-through holding company that has undisclosed control of a NYC luxury condo purchase. It has a large number next to the item (4) on her page, but you can’t present a number on a sheet of paper to have the bank exchange it for fat stacks of Benjamins. The thing she owns on paper seems impossible to liquidate.

Other notable disclosed info:

In October 2018, something happened that caused Trump to sell a lot of assets. Fire-sale style, in all reporting categories, for peanuts in most transactions ($1 to $5k). Dozens of these.
The section where Trump lists the LLCs that he uses to hide his real estate transactions and ownerships is 46 pages long. In a 76 page PDF.
He day-trades stocks using an iShares account (among others). Almost all the transactions are short positions (betting against the company’s stock in the future), but all are laughably low-stakes positions: less than $15k is the biggest order I could find. Hundreds of them.
<>

Trump has an… interesting relationship with numbers, values and quantification. Remember when Trump was worth billions (at least $10 billions, according to him) and that was why he could drain the swamp — he didn’t need money, was too rich to care about special interests, blah blah blah?

According to the legally-mandated annual financial disclosure forms Trump is required to file (2019 is the current disclosure filing), Trump states under penalty of perjury that his net worth is a whopping… $150 million, maybe.
<>
The filing runs 67 pages.

The addendum listing hundreds of LLC shell companies Trump uses to evade taxes runs 42 pages alone:
<>

And from a cursory look at his finances, Trump does not have the accounts and debt ratio of a man without money woes: All his businesses are worthless, collateral for loans propping up other failing ventures… and day-trading stocks. Shorting stocks. At ridiculously small amounts (a dozen a day, none more than $15,000?!?)


But the real story in this filing is *** MELANIA ***, Barron’s mom and Trump’s wife by civil law and contractual obligation. But Melania gets just one page out of the whole disclosure for what she personally owns, what accounts she handles, and what she has put away for a rainy day…
<>
Trump has Melania trapped with just $6,001 in total assets. But the insulting part is that $5,000 of her $6,001 is a real estate fractional asset (like a REIT), which appears to be a $5,000 share of a NYC condo (# 33H) in a building with the street number 721.

In other words: It’s not an asset Melania could sell easily, and so small (maybe the bathroom wall tiles?) that $5k is an afterthought in a condo worth $2–6 million in total. So if Melania decided one dark night to make a break and leave her loveless nightmare, in a perfect world she would have access to $999 that Donald wouldn’t need to pre-approve or legally be notified if/when she liquidated it. He is ruthless.

Oh, and he has lots of loans. Several are due in 2021, and Deutschebank is prominently listed in four loans:
<>

READ THE DISCLOSURE PDF FOR YOURSELF:

Trump, Donald J. 2019 Annual 278.pdf
https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Foge.app.box.com%2Fs%2Fe32qrrfvyxk9cgrvteo7diicwd11pac4

President Trump’s 2019 Financial Disclosure: CREW’s Analysis - CREW
CREW found new information about President Trump's properties and the Trump Organization in his 2019 public financial disclosure.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/president-trumps-2019-financial-disclosure-crews-analysis/

Here's some more "yeah no shit" news.  I don't understand why this is taking so long.  He lost in the Supreme Court.  That should be the end of his appeals.

Presidents may be immune from prosecution while in office, but not their offspring.