Remember back in early 2016 when Donald Trump, who was still regarded as something of a long shot for the presidency, promised he would disclose his tax returns publicly – just like every other candidate had done voluntarily since 1973? “I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time,” Trump said on “Meet the Press.”
The “next period of time” turned out to mean “never.”
Once Trump became skittish about releasing his returns he landed on one recurring reason for why he couldn’t put them out there, as forever memorialized when he was asked about his taxes during a presidential debate.
“As far as my return, I want to file it, except for many years, I’ve been audited every year,” he said in Houston on Feb. 25, 2016. “Twelve years or something like that. Every year, they audit me, audit me, audit me.”
An audit doesn’t prevent anyone from releasing their tax returns. If they really want to, they can go right ahead. Richard Nixon — RICHARD NIXON — released his tax returns when he was being audited. And it is extremely rare, also bordering on never, for someone to be audited several years in a row, much less 12. So maybe Trump hasn’t been entirely forthright about his audits. But who knows? When asked during one interview why he thought he had been targeted, he gave a faith-based response. “Well, maybe because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it, maybe there’s a bias,” he once offered.
In the end, Trump, who regards disclosure of his tax returns as a financial form of open-heart surgery, decided that people should just stop bothering him. “I’m worth more than $10 billion by any stretch of the imagination. Has tremendous cash. Tremendous cash flow. You don’t learn much from tax returns,” he told “Meet the Press” several months before Election Day in 2016. “But I would love to give the tax returns. But I can’t do it until I’m finished with the audit.”
All that talk of an audit may have put Trump in a corner. On Wednesday night, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee asked the Internal Revenue Service to release six years of the president’s personal and business tax returns, attributing their request to Congress’s oversight role. Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the committee, said he was making the request precisely because he wanted to make sure that the IRS was properly auditing Trump.
Trump has already said he isn’t inclined to release his tax returns in accordance with Neal’s request, so this is certain to ignite a legal battle. In the interests of good government and the avoidance of financial conflicts of interest in the Oval Office, I hope Congress wins this one. And I know, for a fact, that it’s not true that you don’t learn much from a tax return. As I noted back in early 2016, I have seen Trump’s tax returns, and I think you should too.
Trump unsuccessfully sued me in 2006 for libel over a biography I wrote called “TrumpNation,” citing unflattering sections of the book that examined his business record and wealth. He lost the suit in 2011, and during the litigation he was forced to turn over his tax returns to my lawyers.
As I noted in 2016, I think there are five broad categories of disclosure related to his returns that should matter to voters, politicians, and anyone else interested in making sure the White House is conflicts-of-interest free.
1) Income: The returns would offer a gauge of how financially robust the president’s businesses actually are and how much of that money flows to him.
As I noted in 2016, I think there are five broad categories of disclosure related to his returns that should matter to voters, politicians, and anyone else interested in making sure the White House is conflicts-of-interest free.
1) Income: The returns would offer a gauge of how financially robust the president’s businesses actually are and how much of that money flows to him.
2) Business Activities: Trump has always said that the Trump Organization employs thousands and that U.S. companies shouldn’t relocate overseas and take jobs away from U.S. workers. Tax returns would offer a view of Trump’s global footprint and provide a clearer sense of the size and scope of his company.
3) Charitable Giving: Trump has often bragged about being a dedicated philanthropist. If that’s true, his returns would prove it.
4) Tax Planning: The president uses a lot of shell companies, or LLCs, as part of his business and personal dealings. Some wealthy people have also used shell companies overseas to mask their fortunes and hide the money from authorities. Trump’s returns would show how actively he has used tax havens, if at all.
5) Transparency and Accountability: This may be the most important category of all. Trump is now, arguably, the most powerful and influential man in the world. His tax returns would provide a much clearer picture of potential financial conflicts or pressures that would come to bear on him in the White House. They would also provide a way of monitoring whether the president is more interested in his financial self-interest and deal-making than policy-making.
Neal has only requested six years of Trump’s returns, which is, I think, regrettable. Some of the transactions that may interest investigators the most took place around 15 years ago, when Trump, suddenly flush with cash, went on a shopping spree. He
- bought and developed golf courses,
- launched a new hotel and condominium in Chicago, and
- deepened his involvement with the Trump SoHo Hotel in lower Manhattan.
It is still curious to me how Trump, who always used to finance his transactions with debt, raised the funds to do all that in the mid-2000s and pay cash. To find out, Neal will have to dig deeper than six years ago.
White House Indicates It Won’t Meet Deadline for Trump Tax Returns
House Ways and Means chairman has requested the documents by 5 p.m.
“Once he’s out of audit, he’ll think about doing it. But he’s not inclined to do so at this time,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Fox News. “There is nothing nefarious there at all. This was litigated in 2016.”
The White House’s arguments about audits and public disinterest are disconnected from the arguments the Trump administration would eventually have to make to persuade judges that Congress is acting beyond its legal authority.
The request for the returns was made to the IRS under a law that would require them to be handed over, but Mr. Trump has strongly indicated his preference that they not be released. Treasury Department and IRS officials on Tuesday didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has said he would interpret a failure to meet Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline as a denial of the request. He may soon issue a subpoena for the president’s returns or take the IRS straight to federal court to enforce a 1924 law that lets the chairmen of congressional tax-writing committees get any taxpayer’s returns.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer’s said in 2016 that he was under audit for tax years starting in 2009. As president, his returns face a mandatory audit under an IRS policy.
That audit and the fact that the returns were discussed during the 2016 election are irrelevant to Mr. Neal’s request. When Democrats took control of the House in January, he gained the power to obtain anyone’s tax returns.
Democrats say the returns could reveal more information about the former real-estate developer’s
- sources of income,
- tax strategies,
- charitable giving and any
- conflicts of interest.
Legal observers generally agree that the tax-writing committee must have a legislative purpose for getting one’s tax returns, and any court case could turn on whether that standard has been met. In his April 3 request, Mr. Neal argued that Congress needs to see how well the IRS is auditing the president and raised the possibility Congress could consider legislation in that area.
Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and his allies in Congress have dismissed that reasoning as pretext. In their view, Democrats are on a political quest.
Democrats see a simple statute being ignored. If Mr. Mnuchin doesn’t turn over the documents, “he is likely engaged in the most serious executive branch defiance of law since the Nixon Administration,” Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary, wrote on Twitter.
It could now take months for the legal process to unfold, and both sides seem dug in. Judges will look, in part, to a 1957 case in which the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man who had refused to answer some questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee.
“We have no doubt that there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure. The public is, of course, entitled to be informed concerning the workings of its government,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren. “That cannot be inflated into a general power to expose where the predominant result can only be an invasion of the private rights of individuals.”
Mr. Neal sought six years of the president’s individual and business tax returns. If Mr. Neal does get the documents, his committee would first be able to view them in a closed session, and Mr. Neal could designate agents to review them, including the experienced nonpartisan staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.
It would then take a vote by the full Ways and Means Committee to make the tax returns, or a report based on them, a public document. Democrats outnumber Republicans on that committee 25 to 17.
Blocking Trump Tax Return Release Puts Treasury Sec. In Legal Jeopardy | The Last Word | MSNBC
In a new Daily Beast article, tax expert David Cay Johnston reveals that if the treasury secretary and IRS commissioner do not comply with the request to release Trump’s tax returns, they will be violating a law punishable by up to five years in prison. Lawrence O’Donnell discusses with David Cay Johnston in an exclusive interview.
Tensions quickly spiral as Democrats ramp up investigations of Trump administration
Among Schiff’s new committee hires is Abigail C. Grace, who served as an Asia policy staffer on the National Security Council during the Trump administration until departing last spring for a Washington think tank.
At the Center for a New American Security, Grace worked as a research associate in the Asia-Pacific Security Program, a relatively junior-level position. She published essays on Asia policy and was quoted in news articles, including in The Washington Post, offering analysis about Trump’s Asia strategy. She announced her departure from the think tank last week and began work Monday on Schiff’s team, specializing in East Asia affairs, said people who know her.
.. “Although none of our staff has come directly from the White House, we have hired people with prior experience on the National Security Council staff for oversight of the agencies, and will continue to do so at our discretion,” the aide said.
A fluent Chinese speaker who accompanied Trump on his visit to five Asian countries in November 2017, Grace is expected to help the committee conduct oversight as the administration pursues high-stakes negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and a trade war with China.
Grace was not a political appointee but rather a civil servant who started at the NSC working on Middle East affairs during the Obama administration in 2016, before switching to a focus on East Asia, said those familiar with her work. Her duties included assisting Matt Pottinger, the NSC’s senior Asia director who helps national security adviser John Bolton coordinate policy among the federal agencies and advise Trump.
.. Some senior Trump aides have privately expressed concern that Schiff’s hiring of former White House staff members is a bid for inside information that could be particularly damaging — a sign of the growing alarm over the president’s vulnerability in a new era of divided government.
But former staffers from the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, as well as longtime civil servants, said it was not unusual for government policy experts to leave and wind up advising or working for lawmakers.
“It happens every day,” said a Capitol Hill staffer who is not on Schiff’s committee. The staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, rattled off a number of former Hill aides who had worked as policy experts in past administrations. “My understanding is that Schiff was going from the minority to the majority and had to staff up more fully. It’s the normal way things operate.”
.. Also on Thursday, the House held a hearing on obtaining Trump’s tax returns, listening to tax experts who discussed the impact of legislative language that would force presidential candidates to release 10 years of tax returns after they win their party’s nomination.
Three congressional officials are empowered legally to seek taxpayer information from the Treasury Department: the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation. But Rep. Mike Kelly (Pa.), the ranking Republican on the subcommittee that held the hearing, said Congress is barred from releasing tax returns for political purposes.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), responding to criticism from liberals that the House leadership has not moved quickly enough to obtain Trump’s tax returns, said, “You have to be very, very careful if you go forward.”
“In terms of the tax issue, it’s not a question of just sending a letter,” Pelosi said. “I know there’s this impatience because people want to know, that answers the question, but we have to do it in a very careful way.”