Tag: what is Trump hiding?

Two in three Americans want to see Trump’s tax returns, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two out of three Americans want to see President Donald Trump’s income taxes, and about half believe he has been withholding them for reasons that could hurt him politically, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll.

The July 13-14 poll shows many Americans remain concerned about Trump’s finances and potential conflicts of interest with his family business. The survey was conducted after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling over Trump’s financial records last week likely postponed their release to New York City prosecutors until after the Nov. 3 election.

Trump has refused to show the public his personal tax returns for years, bucking a decades-old tradition of financial transparency among presidential contenders. The businessman-turned-politician has routinely questioned the public’s interest in his taxes and said he would not release them because they are under audit. Continue reading.

Trump lawyers say they’ll fight subpoena for president’s tax returns

The Hill logoPresident Trump intends to fight a subpoena for his tax returns and financial records from the Manhattan district attorney after the Supreme Court rejected his claim that he’s immune to criminal investigation, the president’s lawyers told a judge on Wednesday.

In a status report filed with a federal district court in New York, Trump’s legal team said it has other objections to the district attorney’s subpoena aside from the one struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this month.

The move will surely draw out the proceedings in the lower court, and the president’s attorneys made clear that they intend to raise issues about whether District Attorney Cyrus Vance‘s subpoenas are overly broad or relevant to a legitimate investigation. They argued that the case requires the two parties to develop a more thorough factual record. Continue reading.

House to quickly revive legal effort to get Trump’s financial records

The House’s top lawyer urged the Supreme Court to take its final formal steps on the matter so lawmakers can reignite the issue in the lower courts.

The House is planning to quickly revisit its effort to obtain President Donald Trump’s personal financial records, urging the Supreme Court on Monday night to take its final formal steps on the matter so lawmakers can reignite the issue in the lower courts.

In a filing late Monday, the House’s top lawyer, Douglas Letter, urged the justices to immediately effectuate their July 9 ruling on the House’s subpoena for Trump’s records. Once the ruling is in force, the House can return to the U.S. District Court judge who initially heard the case and ask for renewed consideration.

“The Committees’ investigations are ongoing, remain urgent, and have been impeded by the lack of finality in these litigations, which were initiated in April 2019,” Letter and other House attorneys wrote. Continue reading.

Giuliani contradicts Trump’s excuse for hiding his taxes

AlterNet logoFormer Lifelock spokesperson Rudy Giuliani tells Salon that the audits of President Trump’s tax returns have been “completed and accepted,” except for “possibly not most recent.”

Giuliani was confirming claims he made Sunday morning to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. This new story, however, seems to undermine the president’s excuse that he can’t release his returns because they are under audit, a line he has been repeating since the 2016 campaign.

Last Thursday, following the Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling that the Manhattan district attorney can subpoena the president’s tax returns, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeated the excuse to reporters, saying, “The media’s been asking this question for four years, and for four years, the president has said the same thing, his taxes are under audit, and when they’re no longer under audit, he will release them.” Continue reading.

Trump’s new excuse on not releasing his taxes is ‘completely meaningless’ and may not even be in English: CNN’s Toobin

AlterNet logoCNN’s Jeffrey Toobin on Friday found himself flabbergasted by President Donald Trump’s new excuse for not releasing his tax returns, and he questioned whether the president was even speaking English when he made it.

During a CNN panel discussion, Toobin was shown a clip of Trump talking about releasing his tax returns during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“I’m under tax audit, I have been for a long period of time,” the president told Hannity. “Once I ran for politics that deal was like we didn’t make it. So I’m under a continuing audit, and anyone that did that or showed that before you have it finalized, but they treat, they treat me horribly, the IRS. It is a disgrace what has happened. We had a deal done, I guess it was signed even. Once I ran or once I won, somewhere back a long time ago everything was like let’s start all over again.” Continue reading.

Trump’s apparently been too busy hate tweeting to file his annual financial disclosure report

AlterNet logoDonald Trump’s annual financial disclosure report—really the only regular glimpse the public gets of a president’s finances—was due in May. He and other White House employees received a 45-day pandemic extension that came due last week, according to The New York Times.

Guess what? Trump’s financial report still hasn’t been filed.

Trump originally complained the report was “complicated” and said he was far too busy “addressing the coronavirus crisis and other matters” to meet the May deadline, as if he himself was filling it out. Apparently, his rigorous tweet schedule is inhibiting the ability of his accountants to complete the report. Continue reading.

Trump gets no special protections because he’s president and must release financial records, Supreme Court rules

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump has no immunity, by virtue of being president, from a state grand jury subpoena for his business and tax recordsin a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney.

“[N]o citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion.

The court rejected the president’s claims that permitting subpoenas from state prosecutors would open the floodgates to prosecutors nationwide, distracting him from his presidential duties. It reiterated what the court had said in a previous case in which President Bill Clinton had tried to avoid giving a deposition, Clinton v. Jones: The Constitution does not require protecting the president from state grand jury subpoenas. Continue reading.

Rulings let Trump keep his taxes under wraps for now, but his angry reaction underscores a political risk

Washington Post logoPresident Trump reacted angrily to a pair of Supreme Court rulings about his financial records Thursday, taking to Twitter to call them “not fair to this Presidency or Administration!” and describing himself as the victim of a “political prosecution.”

Hours later, the White House released a statement saying Trump was “gratified” by one of the decisions and had been “protected” in the other.

The disjointed responses underscore what in some ways represented a split decision for the president, marked by political and legal ramifications that hold both risks and advantages ahead of the November election. Continue reading.

Five takeaways from Supreme Court’s rulings on Trump tax returns

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court handed down a split decision Thursday that upheld a New York state prosecutor’s authority to access President Trump’s tax returns but dealt a defeat to congressional Democrats who also sought Trump’s records. 

The overlapping efforts to nab the president’s financial paper trail presented the justices with a gordian knot of intersecting legal conflicts dealing with presidential immunity, Congress’s investigative authority and the power of state prosecutors to gather evidence linked to a sitting president.

While the justices untangled some of the thorniest issues, key questions remain unanswered as the cases proceed back down to lower courts for further resolution. Continue reading.

Russian bounties were the subject of police raids six months ago — as more details continue to emerge

AlterNet logoIt hasn’t even been a week since the story of Russia offering bounties for the death of American soldiers in Afghanistan first broke. That initial story suggested that the information had been known since spring, but was unclear about when Donald Trump had been informed or whether Russia had actually followed through in its proxy war against the United States. However, since then the story has grown daily. It’s now clear that the program has been in place for over a year, and that Trump was personally briefed on the threat by John Bolton in March of 2019. If that wasn’t enough, the program was also featured in subsequent daily briefs, including on February 27 when Trump had a tough schedule that included meeting with the actors behind the play FBI Lovebirds.

As more information has developed, the one fairly consistent claim from the White House has been that the information was “unconfirmed” and didn’t rise to the level of taking action. However, it’s obvious that this is untrue. The information was highly regarded enough to form the basis of changes to tactics on the ground in Afghanistan, and it has proven laughably easy to confirm the transfer of money between Russia and Taliban militants. Now more information is available, showing that Russia made these payments on multiple occasions and that a series of raids and arrests were made in chasing down the middlemen of the Russia scheme. And this wasn’t something that happened in the last week—it happened over six months ago. Continue reading.