Trump tax returns

Trump is suing the IRS and Treasury Department for $10 billion, as he accuses the federal agencies of a failure to prevent a leak of the president’s tax information to news outlets between 2018 and 2020.

The suit, filed in a Florida federal court Thursday, includes the president’s sons Eric Trump and, Donald Trump Jr. and the Trump organization as plaintiffs.

The filing alleges that the leak of Trump and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn of Washington, D.C. — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about Trump and others to news outlets.

  AP

So embarrassing and reputation tarnishing that they're bringing it back up to a public that, if they ever knew it happened, had long since forgotten about it.

The guy who leaked has already been punished.  The Trump family is, once again, just raiding the US treasury - your taxes.

UPDATE 06:31 pm:

The Big Beautiful Bill

 

Got a Republican Congress person?  Call them immediately. (Pretend it will make a difference.)

In this bill, they want to cut Medicaid or at least force people to work in order to get benefits.  You know what that is?  Bullshit that sounds good to people who are ignorant of the facts.  So, who is on Medicaid anyway?

 

And, you know who is on Medicaid that will lose health coverage if it's cut?  That's right.  MAGA Republicans. Trump supporters.  

Let them eat cats and dogs.

UPDATE 05/20/2025:

Looks like we poor folk are losing money on this.  Nice work, everybody.  

D'uh

 

Doesn't sound like "may" is the right word.

If you're making $17,000, you simply cannot afford to lose $700.

Also...

Somebody needs to file a lawsuit.

The stories just keep on coming

Makes you wonder why journalists are only now revealing the many Trump grift and fraud stories.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Well, that explains it

Reports have been written lately wondering why, unlike all other presidents, Trump's taxes were not subjected to a mandatory audit while he was in office.  I think we've found the answer.

From CREW, September 1, 2020:

Charles Rettig, the Trump-appointed IRS Commissioner who has refused to release President Trump’s tax returns, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars renting out Trump properties while in office, according to documents obtained by CREW. Last year Rettig said it was his decision whether to turn over Trump’s tax returns to Congress, under the supervision of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

An analysis of Rettig’s personal financial disclosures for the last two years shows Rettig making $100,000 – $200,000 a year from two units at Trump International Waikiki. Trump made a detour to visit the property during a trip to Asia in his first year in office—a priceless promotional appearance for the business he still profits from as president. Rettig bought a 50% stake in the units in 2006, three years before the property opened. [Trump's company got 10% of total pre-sales.]

[...]

[T]here’s no mention of Trump at all in the disclosures. The two properties are referred to only as “Residential Real Estate – Honolulu, Hawaii” and “Residential Real Estate (2) – Honolulu, Hawaii.” This isn’t new. When he was first nominated, he failed to disclose the properties were in a Trump-branded building. At his confirmation hearing, he did not directly answer concerns about the properties, only saying he would serve in an “impartial, unbiased” manner.

  CREW

Confirmation hearings are really a waste of everybody's time. People lie, misrepresent and deceive all the time. Even Supreme Court nominees. I'm looking at you, Barrett, and you, Kavanaugh.

There are all kinds of reasons [Trump] doesn’t want [his tax returns] made public—including the fact that they could point to potential criminal conduct. With Trump’s name removed from some buildings as it began to hurt property values, we can only imagine how toxic it would become if a bombshell in his tax returns were released. Which means the IRS Commissioner has a vested interest in the success of the Trump brand—and of preventing anything that could damage it.

Those tax records are finally being released this week on Friday. Somehow I don't think the usual Friday document dump ploy is going to shield him.

And I'm willing to bet there isn't one single thing Trump did while president (indeed, while living) that was on the up and up.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's tax returns

Thread starts here.  The report is here.

UPDATE:

Of course he knew

After telling jurors on Thursday that Trump “knew exactly what was going on” with the scheme, Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Joshua Steinglass followed up by citing trial evidence and testimony that he said made clear “Mr. Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud.”

[...]

Steinglass, speaking on the last day before deliberations at the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud, showed jurors a lease Trump signed for one executive’s Manhattan apartment and a memo the former president initialed authorizing a pay cut for another executive who got perks.

He also cited Weisselberg’s claim, during his three days of testimony, that he told Trump he would pay him back after Trump agreed to cover his grandchildren’s hefty private school tuition cost. Weisselberg then adjusted his payroll records to cut his pre-tax salary by the cost of the tuition.

[...]

Weisselberg testified that Trump didn’t know, but that the Trump Organization did derive some benefit because it didn’t have to pay him as much in actual salary.

[...]

[T]he company’s lawyers, in their summations, claimed that Trump knew nothing about it.

  The Hill

An absolutely improbable bit of bullshit.

At the outset of the trial, Merchan cautioned the defense and prosecution to avoid talking about Trump so as to not give jurors the impression that longtime real estate honcho was, or should have been, sitting at the defense table.

Well, he should have been.

After Steinglass finished Friday, Trump Organization lawyer Michael van der Veen asked Merchan to declare a mistrial, arguing that the prosecutor had irreparably harmed the defense by effectively portraying Trump as a co-conspirator in the tax fraud scheme.

“I don’t believe it’s necessary to declare a mistrial. That’s not really even a thought,” Merchan said, agreeing to instead caution jurors about Steinglass’ remarks.

[...]

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment, citing the ongoing trial. District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who inherited the case when he took office in January, has said that an investigation of Trump is “active and ongoing,” and that no decision has been made on whether to charge him.

Don't hold your breath.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Don't they know what they owe him?

He expected them to be a political body in his favor.  

Oh my

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by former President Donald Trump to prevent Congress from obtaining his federal income tax returns and those of related business entities from the IRS.

The decision sets the stage for the Democrat-controlled House Ways and Means Committee to obtain Trump’s tax returns in the weeks before Republicans take majority control of the House.

[...]

The order Tuesday by the Supreme Court, which noted no dissent from any justice, comes more than three months after a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Ways and Means Committee had the right to obtain Trump’s tax returns.

  CNBC

They can't afford to look partial to Trump now with the leak scandal in full bloom. No doubt the Republicans will withdraw the request in January, so if the IRS doesn't hand over the records before then, he'll still keep them from Congress.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How's the Trump Org case going over in NY?

Sad!

It's nice to have installed your own personal court

Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of former President Donald Trump's tax returns to a congressional committee.

Roberts' order gives the Supreme Court time to weigh the legal issues in Trump's emergency appeal to the high court, filed Monday.

Without court intervention, the tax returns could have been provided as early as Thursday by the Treasury Department to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.

Roberts gave the committee until Nov. 10 to respond.

[...]

Lower courts ruled that the committee has broad authority to obtain tax returns and rejected Trump’s claims that it was overstepping.

If Trump can persuade the nation’s highest court to intervene in this case, he could potentially delay a final decision until the start of the next Congress in January. If Republicans recapture control of the House in the fall election, they could drop the records request.

The temporary delay imposed by Roberts is the third such order issued by justices in recent days in cases related to Trump.

  Yahoo

Will they shadow docket this one?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11/2:

Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of former President Donald Trump's tax returns to a congressional committee.

Roberts' order gives the Supreme Court time to weigh the legal issues in Trump's emergency appeal to the high court, filed Monday.

Without court intervention, the tax returns could have been provided as early as Thursday by the Treasury Department to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.

Roberts gave the committee until Nov. 10 to respond.

[...]

Lower courts ruled that the committee has broad authority to obtain tax returns and rejected Trump’s claims that it was overstepping.

If Trump can persuade the nation’s highest court to intervene in this case, he could potentially delay a final decision until the start of the next Congress in January. If Republicans recapture control of the House in the fall election, they could drop the records request.

The temporary delay imposed by Roberts is the third such order issued by justices in recent days in cases related to Trump.

  Yahoo

It's nice to have installed your own personal court.

New York lawsuit underway

UPDATE 11/1:

Crybaby crying

Sending his flying monkeys after another official by publicizing that person's name.

What Judge Arthur Engoron is actually doing is making decisions concerning a lawsuit against Trump and his three eldest children for $250 million over the alleged use of inflated company financial statements to mislead lenders in obtaining loans.

The suit was filed last month by New York Attorney General Letitia James (whom Trump always insists on calling “Peekaboo”). James’ office asked Engoron for “an expedited preliminary conference” to quickly schedule the trial for next year, arguing that the Trumps are engaged in an “ongoing” fraud.

James is seeking to prevent the Trumps in the interim from conducting business in the state and to curtail their access to loans.

[...]

Engoron earlier this year held Trump in contempt of court for failure to turn over documents demanded by James.

Trump and his attorneys tried — and failed — to get Engoron bounced from the case.

  HuffPo

We ALL hope so

Weisselberg reaches a plea deal

[Trump Organization CFO] Allen Weisselberg is expected to criminally implicate Trump’s family real estate business when he pleads guilty to criminal tax fraud charges.

[...]

As part of Weisselberg’s plea deal — for which he’s expected to serve five months on Rikers Island — Weisselberg will agree to testify against the companies when they [go] to trial in October if he is called as a witness, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

  NY Daily News

Five months at Riker's won't be a picnic.  But it beats 15 years, which is what he could have faced with a deal.

Former President Donald Trump has not been named as a defendant in the Manhattan district attorney’s case, which stems from a broader probe into his business practices, and Weisselberg’s plea agreement contains no provision relating to cooperating against Trump.

I have to think Trump will be implicated in any lawsuit against the Trump Organization. And his criminal kids, too.

Weisselberg is expected to rescind his not guilty plea to charges alleging he dodged taxes on $1.7 million in fringe benefits while top of the Trump family business’s finances.

The plea deal will allow Mr. Weisselberg, who was facing up to 15 years in prison, to spend as little as 100 days behind bars, according to people with knowledge of the matter. And it does not require Mr. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, to cooperate with the Manhattan district attorney’s office in its broader investigation into Mr. Trump, who has not been accused of wrongdoing.

  NYT

Yet.

Mr. Weisselberg is not expected to implicate Mr. Trump or his family when he takes the stand in the October trial, the people said, and on cross-examination, the company’s lawyers could accuse him of pleading guilty only to spare himself a harsher sentence.

[...]

[H]is testimony — an acknowledgment from one of the Trump Organization’s top executives that he committed the crimes listed in the indictment — will undercut any effort by the company’s lawyers to contend that no crime was committed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The earth may be shifting

This is not measuring up to be a good week for Trump.

Sad!

Now, if the Supreme Court takes up an expected appeal on this, there will be no way for it to claim it's not partisan and doesn't have a right-wing agenda.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.