Release the tax returns

If the Trump Foundation's tax returns are this bad, imagine what his personal returns might reveal.

For years, President Trump personally signed the tax returns for his charitable foundation, scrawling his signature just below a stern warning from the IRS: Providing false information could lead to “penalties of perjury.”

But a lawsuit filed last week by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood alleges that four of the tax returns Trump signed contained incorrect statements, confirming previous reports by The Washington Post.

In 2007, 2012, 2013 and 2014, the Donald J. Trump Foundation stated that none of its money had been used to benefit Trump or his businesses. But the New York attorney general found that, in each of those years, Trump had used his charity’s funds to help one of his businesses. In 2013, the attorney general alleged, Trump also failed to disclose an improper gift to a political group.

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Underwood also accuses Trump of turning his charity into a tool of his 2016 presidential campaign, despite prohibitions on political activity by nonprofit entities. She also laid out her findings in a letter to the IRS, suggesting that federal authorities investigate further.

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Through the 2000s and this decade, Trump repeatedly asserted on state and federal forms that his foundation was following the law.

Underwood’s complaint alleges otherwise.

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If federal officials do not pursue a criminal case against Trump, legal experts said, the tax agency could face its own quandary. Why should other taxpayers be punished for violating the same rules that the president has now been accused of breaking?

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" ‘If they don’t prosecute him, does everybody get a pass?’ ”

  WaPo

What do you think?

In 2007, for instance, Trump used $100,000 from his foundation to settle a legal dispute between his Mar-a-Lago Club and the town of Palm Beach, Fla., The Post previously reported. As part of the settlement, the for-profit beach club had pledged to make a donation to a veterans charity.

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One of the questions on the 990 asks whether a charity has transferred “any income or assets to a disqualified person.” The term “disqualified person” refers to a category of person including an officer of a charity.

Trump was an officer: He was the charity’s president. So, the New York attorney general said, the charity had just transferred money in a way that saved Trump’s business $100,000.

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But on that question, the Trump Foundation checked the box marked “no.”

Trump signed the return.

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The same thing happened in 2012, when Trump used foundation assets — this time, $158,000 — to settle a legal dispute with a man who had sued one of his New York golf clubs over a negated hole-in-one prize.

The golf club agreed to make a donation. The charity made the gift instead, according to the lawsuit.

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Then, in 2013, the Trump Foundation paid $5,000 to put an ad for Trump’s hotel chain in the program for a charity gala. And in 2014, Trump used $10,000 of the charity’s money to buy a portrait of himself, which his employees hung on a wall in a sports bar at a Trump golf resort in Florida.

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In 2013, Trump gave $25,000 of the charity’s money to a political committee supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R). By law, charities are not allowed to make political gifts.

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On that year’s return, as always, the IRS asked whether the Trump Foundation had spent more than $100 for “political purposes.”

The box checked was “no.”

Also, the Trump Foundation omitted any mention of the gift to Bondi’s group when the form asked it to list all outgoing donations. Instead, Trump’s charity listed a different gift in its place: It told the IRS it had given $25,000 to a separate group, in Kansas, with a name similar to Bondi’s political group. But the Kansas group told The Post it never received a donation.

Jesus Christ. A litany of fraud.

“There’s the adage, ‘Ignorance is no excuse.’ That’s not true in tax law. In tax law, ignorance is an excuse for criminal violations,” said Guinevere Moore, a Chicago attorney specializing in tax cases.

The idea, Moore said, is that tax law is so complicated that prosecutors cannot presume people know they are breaking it.

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The president’s strategy, so far, has been to plead ignorance. In filings with the IRS — detailed in the New York attorney general’s suit — Trump blamed the gift to Bondi on a clerical error and said another clerical error had resulted in a nonexistent gift being listed in its place.

Almost as good as Reagan's ubiquitous defense that he forgot.

After The Post’s reporting and the launch of the New York attorney general’s investigation, Trump repaid his foundation for its expenditures. His golf club took down the portrait. He also assessed himself $4,000 in penalty taxes in total on three of the transactions — the portrait, the gala program and the donation to Bondi.

But some tax-law experts said that in the unlikely event Trump winds up in a criminal court, it may be hard to convince a jury that a man of his business experience was so unsophisticated, for so long, about his own charity.

Easier than convincing a judge.

“You could try. But I think it’s probably a loser,” said Christopher Rizek, an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale who has defended clients in tax cases. “You’ve got a guy who’s bragged for years about how smart he is, and how much tax law he knows. And now all of a sudden he doesn’t know anything?”

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Last week, Trump described the lawsuit as a political attack by New York Democrats, although the current New York attorney general, Underwood, is a nonpolitician who was appointed to her post. “I won’t settle this case!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Countdown started. And I'd suggest that defiant statement indicates he did indeed know and thinks he's right.

Already, [Guinevere Moore, a Chicago attorney specializing in tax cases] said, she sees signs that taxpayers have been influenced by Trump’s approach toward his charity, as well as the way he bragged during the 2016 campaign that trying to avoid taxes “makes me smart.”

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In filings to the IRS, Trump’s foundation offered a separate defense: Clerical errors caused the foundation to make payments it should not have, and Trump knew so little about charity rules that he broke the law without knowing it. “Neither the Foundation nor [Trump] knew,” the group wrote in an IRS filing, it was wrong to use foundation money to buy a portrait that hung on a wall in one of Trump’s golf resorts.

My ass. And even if he didn't - he did - the Trump Foundation has tax attorneys.

It's about time somebody filed a lawsuit on the Trump Foundation - we've known about its illegal use since before the 2016 election.