Late on Tuesday night, the New York Times published ten years of federal tax information about the President (link here), representing the years 1985 to 1994. This is the largest release about his tax returns to date and comes almost exactly four years after Trump promised to release his tax returns if he ran for high office, which he never ended up doing.
The Times also published a companion story (link here) with the five most shocking revelations from the story, which include the fact that Trump had more than a billion in alleged losses, paid no federal tax for at least eight years, that in some years had the highest tax loss in the country, and that he engaged in an illegal scheme known as "pump and dump" where he publicly claimed he was taking over a company simply to run up the stock price, then quietly dumped all his shares.
Unrelated to the above, Reuters broke the story that Trump's former attorney and personal fixer Michael Cohen brokered a deal before the election to make "racy personal photos" featuring Jerry Falwell Jr. disappear. Shortly after this favor, Falwell endorsed Trump in a move that substantially improved the latter's standing with evangelicals and could have made the difference in getting him elected.
Such a quid pro quo could be a criminal violation of federal election laws if Cohen's disappearing act was a prerequisite for the endorsement. A poolboy who mysteriously received a business loan of nearly $2 million from Falwell around the same time as the photo incident has denied being involved in the racy photos (details here).
Yesterday, in attempt to head off contempt charges against his attorney general, Trump suddenly declared the entire Mueller Report and all of its exhibits were exempt from release because of executive privilege, notwithstanding that most of the report, including many damning portions, have already been released to the public (details here). If you claimed the report exonerated you, why would you need to hide it?
The House Judiciary Committee nonetheless voted to hold the attorney general in contempt and now the matter moves to the full House for a vote. That could end up being the first step to the attorney general's impeachment.
At the same time, it was was revealed Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. had been subpoenaed by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee because his previous testimony before them is significantly different than what Robert Mueller's team uncovered regarding the family's involvement in planning the Trump Tower Moscow at the same time as the presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Chairman is expected to decide today whether to skip a subpoena of Trump's tax returns and proceed directly to federal court to force their release (details here and here). A challenge to Trump's claim of executive privilege over the Mueller Report is also expect to land in federal court shortly.
In New York, the state senate voted yesterday in favor of fast-track legislation to release Trump's state tax returns to Congressional investigators (details here). The matter is expected to easily pass the state's other legislative chamber and will then proceed to the governor for signature, something he has already said he will do.
New York's state income tax is such that the return largely mirrors a federal return and would thus provide investigators with financial data that should be duplicated on a federal return.
Each of these developments likely will spawn new stories and reports and I'll try to bring such details to you here in future reports.
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