Tag: Trump criminal investigation

Exclusive: New York City tax agency subpoenaed in Trump criminal probe

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The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has subpoenaed a New York City property tax agency as part of a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s company, the agency confirmed on Friday, suggesting prosecutors are examining the former president’s efforts to reduce his commercial real-estate taxes for possible evidence of fraud.

The subpoena issued to the New York City Tax Commission is the latest indication that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. is looking at the values Trump assigned to some commercial properties in tax filings and loan documents.

Along with information already subpoenaed from creditors, the tax agency documents would help investigators determine whether Trump’s business inflated the value of his properties to secure favorable terms on loans while deflating those values to lower tax bills for those same properties. Continue reading.

Here are 4 ways the Republicans’ star witness actually just undermined Trump’s bogus talking points about the Russia investigation

Andrew McCarthy has been an aggressive defender of President Donald Trump against the charges brought up by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation on Fox News and elsewhere. In fact, the former federal prosecutor has been such a fierce advocate for Trump and a purveyor of the right wing’s talking points that Republicans called him before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday to testify.

But before the committee and under penalty of perjury, McCarthy actually contradicted several of the GOP’s favorite talking points about the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, as both John Amato and Kyle Cheney pointed out.

1. He said no one who approved the Carter Page FISA application — which has been the source of outrage on the right — was acting bad faith.

One of the biggest sources of trumped-up outrage in right-wing media about the Russia investigation has been the surveillance of one-time Trump aide Carter Page, who was actually only surveilled after he left the campaign. (The Mueller report indicates Page has been targeted as a Russian intelligence asset in the past, though he wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing.) This one choice by investigators has been used to suggest that the FBI was on a politically motivated crusade targeting the Trump campaign — possibly in a conspiracy that went up to President Barack Obama.

View the complete June 13 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.