(Bold-type is for ease of reading, not necessarily for emphasis):
Donald J Trump is, admittedly, a master of distraction and diversion in the news cycle. And, Donald J Trump is very, very afraid. He has become increasingly isolated in his own party, and he has lost most of the support he had with the military. But, the thing that most certainly keeps him up at night is his core supporters finding out the glaring truth: Donald Trump’s image as “genius billionaire” is false. He is a complete fraud who has been bankrupt for decades, and has relied on Russian mob money to stay afloat. In short, Donald J Trump is partners with the Russian mob and his tax returns will lay all of that bare.
Exposing Trump’s tax returns isn’t the ‘sexiest’ route to topple the Occupant, but it has the most legal teeth because he has been engaging in fraud for years.
On October 16, 2019, just five days ago, this ProPublica story broke:
by Heather Vogell
Oct. 16, 2019
Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump’s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings’ property tax.
For instance, Trump told the lender that he took in twice as much rent from one building as he reported to tax authorities during the same year, 2017. He also gave conflicting occupancy figures for one of his signature skyscrapers, located at 40 Wall Street.
...The discrepancies are “versions of fraud,” said Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. “This kind of stuff is not OK.”
What did Trump do to distract everyone from this ProPublica news bomb?
And:
Nancy Pelosi’s (excellent) wagging finger became an international conversation for days while Trump’s tax return fraud slipped out of sight and down the rabbit hole. Trump did this because he is afraid.
Here are the salient issues that we progressives need to keep on the front-burner of the news cycle, no matter what crazy antic Trump drums up to get it out of sight and mind.
1. Whistleblowers are trying to expose illegal tax interference from Trump appointees:
An Internal Revenue Service official has filed a whistleblower complaint reporting that he was told that at least one Treasury Department political appointee attempted to improperly interfere with the annual audit of the president’s or vice president’s tax returns, according to multiple people familiar with the document…
...The details of the IRS complaint follow news of a separate, explosive whistleblower complaint filed in August by a member of the intelligence community. That complaint revealed Trump’s request of Ukranian leaders to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a political rival. It has spurred an impeachment probe on Capitol Hill.
2. Trump is fighting, tooth and nail, to prohibit the release of his tax returns to these entities:
Trump has previously been accused of manipulating numbers on his tax and loan documents, including by his former lawyer, Cohen. But Trump’s business is notoriously opaque, with records rarely surfacing, and up till now there’s been little documentary evidence supporting those claims.
That’s one reason that multiple governmental entities, including two congressional committees and the office of the Manhattan district attorney, have subpoenaed Donald Trump’s tax returns. Trump has resisted, taking his battles to federal courts in Washington and New York. And so the question of whether different parts of the government can see the president’s financial information is now playing out in two appeals courts and seems destined to make it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
3. The “opaque” nature of Trump’s business is, most likely, done by a common accounting fraud technique: cooking the books/two sets of books.
“It really feels like there’s two sets of books — it feels like a set of books for the tax guy and a set for the lender,” said Kevin Riordan, a financing expert and real estate professor at Montclair State University who reviewed the records. “It’s hard to argue numbers. That’s black and white.”
4. He is fighting the subpoenas with a type of “Presidential privilege” that is not recognized in the law, nor has it been evoked legally before:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office (Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.) on Monday accused President Trump and his lawyers of trying to invent a “new presidential ‘tax return’ privilege” by arguing that Mr. Trump should not have to comply with a subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate returns.
The district attorney’s office used the pointed language in court papers, asking that a lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump last week be dismissed. Mr. Trump sued in federal court to block a subpoena issued by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., to the president’s accounting firm that seeks his tax returns dating to 2011.
Citing constitutional grounds, lawyers for Mr. Trump argued in their lawsuit that a sitting president could not be criminally investigated and said that forcing him to comply with the subpoena would cause him “irreparable harm.”
In its response, the district attorney’s office noted that Mr. Trump did not go to court to stop two recent criminal investigations that focused on him or his family business, one by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the other by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
The only difference, Mr. Vance’s office argued, was that its criminal investigation involved securing the president’s tax returns.
The president “is, in fact, seeking to invent and enforce a new presidential ‘tax return privilege,’ on the theory that disclosing information in a tax return will necessarily reveal information that will somehow impede the functioning of a president,” Mr. Vance’s office wrote.
5. District Judge Victor Marrero from the US District Court in Manhattan dismissed Trump’s lawsuit that sought to block Vance’s lawsuit, and stated, unequivocally, that Trump’s position is unconstitutional, isn’t above the law, and is “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.”
Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed the lower court’s decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which agreed to stay, or temporarily delay, enforcement of the subpoena while it considers arguments in the case.
6. On Oct. 11, ‘19, a different appellate court, the DC Circuit Court, upheld the House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoena for Trump’s taxes:
Uh-Oh. Democrats will have access to Trump’s tax forms if Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, complies with the subpoena. Thus, Mazars USA is trying hard not to comply with the subpoena:
Mazars indicated that it will comply with these subpoenas if the courts ultimately order them to do so. That sets the Mazars cases aside from other fights to uncover information about the president: Trump’s pledge of maximal resistance to the impeachment probe suggests that he will not turn over any documents in his own possession, but he can’t prevent a third party like Mazars from complying with a subpoena.
Translation: we are going to wait till this goes all the way to the US Supreme Court.
7. Trump is simply trying to run out the clock until the election, since his legal arguments are “embarrassingly weak” and he would likely lose on the merits:
Though the appeals court ruled against Trump on Friday, the court announced shortly thereafter that the order would not take effect right away — and could likely be delayed even further if Trump files a petition asking all eleven of the DC Circuit’s judges to rehear the case.
In practice, such a petition could delay resolution of this case for months. Though the DC Circuit is unlikely to agree to rehear this case, the court’s judges could spend weeks or even months arguing among themselves — and producing opinions memorializing those arguments — about whether to grant a petition for rehearing.
Looming over all of this is the Supreme Court, with its Republican majority that frequently backs Trump after the president runs into trouble in lower courts. Even if the Supreme Court ultimate rejects Trump’s arguments on the merits, it too could delay resolution of these cases by months or even more than a year — potentially letting Trump keep his finances secret until the 2020 election is over.
Maximal pressure to release Trump’s tax returns must be waged by journalists, the People, and every single Democratic Representative and Senator. Other Republicans will likely also fall.