Guys, let’s face it, some of us may not have completed out taxes that’s due in 12-days, but we certainly have taxes for the last few years filed away.
So the fact that Bernie has not released them is a really big deal.
“Perhaps” with a huge “P” this story that was picked-up by a dozen legitimate media outlet “might” be the problem:
According to a new report in the Free Beacon, Bernie Sanders has, on multiple occasions, steered campaign and nonprofit money to friends and family.
While not necessarily illegal, the Sanders family’s apparent tendency to keep deals within the family, so to speak, is somewhat at odds with Sanders’ emphatic focus on anticorruption rhetoric.
But public records examined by the Free Beacon reportedly show Sanders’ family endeavors often had the added feature of benefitting those close to them.
Early on, Sanders’ wife—Jane O’Meara Sanders—and his stepdaughter, Carina Driscoll, both received salaries from his early political campaigns. (Sanders’ House campaign reportedly paid O’Meara Sanders $90,000 for “consulting and ad placement services from 2002 to 2004.” Driscoll, too, got paid $65,000 between 2000 and 2004.)
And at Burlington College, where O’Meara Sanders served as president until 2011, at least two contracts yielded six-figure payouts for companies run by Driscoll and a close friend of the Sanders family.
One friend who benefitted was the son of Jonathan Leopold (also named Jonathan), a friend so close to Sanders he once called him “family.” According to the Free Beacon, the Burlington began paying for students studying abroad in the Bahamas to stay at a resort owned by Leopold, who was also a Burlington board member.
This is some salacious stuff that was picked-up by Vanity Fair and many others. Personally, I ignored it as a smear but now, I’m not so sure.
If Mrs. Sanders always does the taxes, she and other members of the family can live well on campaign salaries without the scrutiny of the public record.
It’s incumbent upon Mr. Sanders to shut down this firestorm now so we don’t have to speculate about his tax situation anymore.