In the weeds

New York prosecutors have subpoenaed a Manhattan private school as they seek the cooperation of the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer in their investigation of former President Donald Trump and his company, according to people familiar with the matter.

The subpoena seeks information from Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, where grandchildren of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg are students, the people said. From 2012 to 2019, more than $500,000 of the children’s tuition was paid for with checks signed by either Mr. Weisselberg or Mr. Trump, the two children’s mother, Jennifer Weisselberg, told The Wall Street Journal. She is the former wife of Mr. Weisselberg’s son Barry.

[...]

Columbia Prep is a private school of roughly 1,300 prekindergarten through high-school students on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Tuition this academic year ran more than $50,000.

[...]

Ms. Weisselberg said she told Manhattan prosecutors that she and Barry understood the tuition payments to be part of her ex-husband’s compensation package at the Trump Organization, where he worked.

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Ms. Weisselberg told the Journal she and her ex-husband never paid their children’s tuition. She said she delivered some checks to the school that were signed by Mr. Trump. She said others, beginning around 2015, were signed by Allen Weisselberg.

  WSJ

About the time Trump decided to run for president.

Let me guess why he paid Weisselberg this way...Trump can claim a bigger tax break on the kids' tuition. Not to mention, he doesn't have to pay any employee-related taxes on it.

And Weisselberg gets a break, too.

Former prosecutors not involved in the probe said the Manhattan district attorney’s office could be examining whether the Weisselbergs evaded taxes with the tuition-payment arrangement.

[...]

Mr. Weisselberg has worked for the Trump Organization for decades and is regarded as Mr. Trump’s confidante and his company’s financial gatekeeper. Mr. Weisselberg hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.

They may be squeezing Weisselberg to cooperate in their investigations of Trump himself.

In 2017, Mr. Weisselberg became a co-trustee charged with managing the president’s business assets.

[...]

People who know Mr. Weisselberg say he is faithful to the Trump Organization, and they questioned whether he would ever breach that loyalty.

I can't imagine Trump hired anyone with morals, so I'd say it depends on the extent of the penalty he might pay. 

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

UPDATE:

Bad morning for Trump in court

President Donald Trump’s attorney faced a rough Friday morning at the Second Circuit where a three-judge panel appeared inclined to let a Manhattan grand jury access his tax returns for an ongoing fraud investigation.

[...]

“Are you asking us to change the ways grand juries have worked since time immemorial?” Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Katzmann asked at one point, referring to the traditional secrecy and breadth of their operations.

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Trump initially claimed that a sitting president, his associates and his businesses have immunity from state criminal proceedings — an argument resoundingly rejected by every court that has heard it.

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During his colleague’s withering questioning, U.S. Circuit Judge Pierre Leval referred to the allegations of Trump’s complaint as “contrived” and inquired whether it asked questions that were “irrelevant.”

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Trump has been fighting to keep a grand jury from seeing his financial records since late last year.

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U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier [...] asked [Trump’s attorney William] Consovoy whether there was a document request that Trump would not consider overbroad. Consovoy answered in the negative. “That’s a problem,” responded Lohier

  Courthouse News

"It's investigating fraud with respect to a tax return filed in New York, by a New York taxpayer," said Leval [...] . "It needs to investigate all the documents on which that tax return will be based and there's no reason why that wouldn't include business operations outside the county of New York."

Trump has mounted a new legal challenge to the subpoena following a Supreme Court ruling in July that the president does not have any special immunity to such investigations.

His lawyers are appealing a district court judge's ruling that rejected the claim that the subpoena is overly broad and was issued in bad faith.

They are arguing that the subpoena goes far beyond what had been reported to be the scope of the investigation, namely hush money payments in 2016 to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.

"If you were to look up the definition of a fishing expedition, this is it," William Consovoy, Trump's personal attorney, told the court. "The district attorney isn't focused on anything."

The prosecutor's office, led by District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. (D), has countered that they have never suggested that the investigation was limited to the payments, which were delivered by Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for his role in the scheme.

  The Hill

Also, it's not unheard of for a case to go before a grand jury and come out with additional charges.

And last month, the prosecutors hinted at a much broader probe into "possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization."

At [today]'s hearing, Judge Raymond Lohier [...] questioned why the court should dictate what the grand jury could and couldn't investigate.

"I think that's a natural conclusion that every grand jury investigation, particularly of this importance, will start to grow, both in terms of the nature of the possible charges that the grand jury is investigating, and in terms of the documents, and witnesses and so on, that may be of interest to the grand jury," Lohier said. "And given that, why should we require a specific allegation that this is the one grand jury investigation that's unique, in that it's stuck, it did not expand beyond the 2016 Cohen payments."

To be continued.

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

Trump's lawyers: Jay Sekulow - Part 2

Jay Sekulow, one of President Donald Trump’s lead attorneys during the impeachment trial, is being paid for his legal work through a rented $80-a-month mailbox a block away from the White House.

The Pennsylvania Avenue box appears to be the sole physical location of the Constitutional Litigation and Advocacy Group, a for-profit corporation co-owned by Sekulow. The firm has no website and is not listed in national legal directories. The District of Columbia Bar has no record of it, and no attorneys list it as their employer.

But Sekulow, 63, is registered as chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, a non-profit Christian legal advocacy group based in an expansive Capitol Hill row house a short walk from the Senate chamber.

A half dozen lawyers employed by the non-profit ACLJ are named in recent Senate legal briefs as members of Trump’s defense team — including one of Sekulow’s sons. The ACLJ, as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, is barred under IRS rules from engaging in partisan political activities.

The Republican National Committee has paid more than $250,000 to Sekulow’s for-profit CLA Group since 2017, when he was first named to Trump’s legal team as special counsel Robert Mueller was leading the Russia investigation, according to campaign disclosures.

[...]

Charity watchdogs for years have raised concerns about the blurred lines between for-profit businesses tied to Sekulow and the complex web of non-profit entities he and his family control.

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The records from 2008 to 2017, the most recent year available, show that more than $65 million in charitable funds were paid to Sekulow, his wife, his sons, his brother, his sister-in-law, his nephew and corporations they own.

  AP News

Smells like the Trump charitable fund that recently got closed down by the courts.

Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said Sekulow appears to be mixing his defense of Trump with his charitable endeavors. The group has issued a “Donor Alert” about ACLJ on its CharityWatch website.

[...]

“Regulators should investigate whether or not charitable resources, such as office, labor, equipment, etc., are being wrongly utilized to benefit Sekulow’s for-profit law firm.”

[...]

A 2005 investigation by the publication Legal Times reported about questionable spending at ACLJ, quoting former employees describing millions in charity funds being spent to support the Sekulows’ lavish lifestyle, which included multiple homes, golf junkets, chauffeur-driven cars and a private jet used to ferry then-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The Guardian and The Washington Post reported additional details in 2017, shortly after Sekulow was named as Trump’s lawyer.

Over the 10-year-period examined by AP, the tax returns show nearly $37 million in charitable funds were paid by ACLJ to the CLA Group, the phantom law firm listed on court filings as defending Trump.

[...]

A Brooklyn native, Sekulow graduated from Mercer Law School in Georgia and briefly worked for the Internal Revenue Service before going into private practice in Atlanta with his former classmate Roth in the early 1980s. The pair specialized in buying and selling historic properties as tax shelters, but the business collapsed after disgruntled investors sued them over alleged fraud and securities violations. Court records show both Sekulow and Roth filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1987.

Sekulow quickly remade himself as general counsel for the group Jews for Jesus.

[...]

The following year, records show Sekulow founded the non-profit Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), a charity “dedicated to the ideal that religious freedom and freedom of speech are inalienable, god given rights.”

In 1992, he was named chief counsel at the ACLJ, which was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson as a conservative counterweight to the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union.

[...]

All six of the charity’s paid board members share the last name Sekulow, including Jay’s wife, Pam, and their sons, Jordon and Logan.

[...]

The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance recommends at least five independent board members and not more than one who receives direct financial benefits. Bennett Weiner, who heads the BBB alliance, said it issued an advisory about ACLJ after the organization didn’t respond to requests for more information about its finances.

[...]

Federal law forbids charities from excessively benefiting those who have “substantial influence over the organization.” Owens said both the IRS and state attorneys general should investigate.

“This is an apparent web of organizations that seem to exist to pay compensation to Sekulow and his family members,” said Owens, who is now in private practice. “That pattern clearly raises questions for those entities that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) as to whether they’re operating for a public benefit or the private benefit of Jay Sekulow and his family members.”

[...]

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, is investigating the potential abuse of charitable funds raised by the organizations tied to Sekulow. Spokeswoman Laura Brewer said it was unclear when that probe, begun in 2017, would be complete.

There's not so much a swamp in Trump's Washington, as a snake pit.

Part 1

Tell this to the farmers he's ruining with bad trrade policy

A HuffPost analysis of the taxes paid by the various tracts that make up Trump National Golf Club Bedminster shows that Trump is paying $88,067 less in property taxes in 2019 than he would have had those acres been taxed at the average rate of the land in the remainder of the golf resort.

[...]

According to his golf course’s latest filing with Bedminster Township to justify its “farmland assessment” tax break, Trump maintains eight goats and farms hay on 113.2 acres. Another 70.6 acres of adjacent woods are also set aside as agricultural, so that a total of 183.8 of the golf resort’s 514 acres are taxed at a much lower rate ― just over $6 an acre, rather than $462.

[...]

Allan Sampson, the “farm operator” listed on Trump’s farmland assessment application, said he plants and harvests the hay but knew nothing of the animals. “I don’t deal with the goats,” he said, declining to provide details about his financial arrangement with the golf resort.

[...]

THe is reportedly receiving a similar agricultural break for his golf resort in Colts Neck, New Jersey. And in municipalities stretching from Ossining, New York, to Chicago to Palm Beach, Florida, Trump has sued to lower his property taxes, claiming that his hotels and golf resorts are really only worth a fraction of what he says they are worth on his financial disclosure forms, according to ProPublica.

“No doubt Trump aims to milk this farm exemption for whatever he can,” Weissman said.

[...]

he White House also did not respond to goat-related queries.

  HuffPo

And I won't make any comments about the possible parentage of the old goat's Bedminster kids.

Taking on Davos

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

Shocking: Tax bill benefits the rich

One of the giveaways to millionaires and billionaires in the Trump tax bill allows shareholders in Subchapter S corporations, also known as “pass-throughs” (because the income passes through the corporation to the shareholder’s income tax return, instead of being taxed separately at the corporate level) to only pay tax on 80% of that income. Not only is this a giveaway to the wealthiest among us, but it will also likely benefit President Trump enormously, as the many entities that fall under the umbrella of The Trump Organization are likely pass-through corporations.

But, another lucrative loophole, one designed precisely for businesses that are organized as pass-throughs and make money abroad, has largely escaped notice. President Trump has numerous foreign-based entities, such as DJ Aerospace Limited incorporated in Bermuda, Turnberry Scotland LLC incorporated in Turnberry, Scotland, TIGL Ireland Enterprises Limited incorporated in Doonbeg, Ireland, and THC Barra Hotelaria TLDA incorporated in Brazil, are likely Subchapter S Corporations, which means that this loophole will almost certainly directly benefit him.

This new loophole allows shareholders of pass-through entities to pay zero tax indefinitely on their foreign income.

  CREW

And that pass-through bullshit - that's fucked up.

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

Don't try this at home

The Internal Revenue Service is demanding a whopping $7 billion or more in back taxes from the world’s most profitable hedge fund, whose boss’s wealth and cyber savvy helped Donald Trump pole-vault into the White House.

  McClatchy

Jesus fucking Christ.

Suddenly, the government’s seven-year pursuit of Renaissance Technologies LLC is blanketed in political intrigue, now that the hedge fund’s reclusive, anti-establishment co-chief executive, Robert Mercer, has morphed into a political force who might be owed a big presidential favor.

[...]

Since the IRS found in 2010 that a complicated banking method used by Renaissance and about 10 other hedge funds was a tax-avoidance scheme, Mercer has gotten increasingly active in politics. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, he doled out more than $22 million to outside conservative groups seeking to influence last year’s elections, while advocating the abolition of the IRS and much of the federal government.

[...]

IRS leader Koskinen has said publicly that he intends to finish his term. On his watch, the agency hasn’t been cowed by the Mercers.

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But Renaissance, with assets estimated at $97 billion on Dec. 31, 2016, has shown no signs of buckling to the IRS’s demands.

Isn't that what courts are for?

The Renaissance case is not yet in tax court.

[...]

Trump has the legal authority to replace Koskinen and the IRS’s chief counsel, the other agency position requiring Senate confirmation. The latter post is occupied by an acting chief counsel.

He's busy right now. But I think we should expect it.

John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University who monitors the behavior of Wall Street firms, said the Mercers might win Koskinen’s ouster, but he doubts they could undermine the case.

“I don’t know they’re going to get their candidate in,” he said, “and I’m not sure many candidates are going to try to reverse the staff on something that’s already deeply advanced in either litigation or negotiation.”

[...]

Perhaps the biggest Mercer foundation beneficiary has been the Citizens United Foundation, which received $3.8 million from 2011 through 2015. The foundation’s advocacy arm, Citizens United, wants Koskinen to be impeached. It also spearheaded attacks on Clinton last year over her use of a personal email account to conduct official business during eight years as secretary of state. David Bossie, who is president of both Citizens United entities, and Rebekah Mercer collaborated on the super PAC that backed Trump and later as members of Trump’s transition team.

[...]

Dennis Ventry, an expert in tax law policy from the University of California at Davis School of Law, said he was unaware of any instance in which a president had intervened to stop a tax audit or prosecution. So far, he said, Trump “has been remarkably restrained regarding the IRS.”

As someone who's apt to come before the agency himself, I can see why.

Something seems odd

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