They got 200 tax returns and 100,000 pages of documents, so it wasn’t exactly a weekend assignment. Plus lots of interviews. Glad they took time to do it right.
If Trump lied on his federal returns, he certainly also lied on his state returns.
And it looks like NY is on the case.
Probably not, but a juicy $100 million fine would be nice. Especially if he can’t pay it.
The story from his lawyer is that Trump knew nothing, knew nothing, and his relatives and tax accountants are to blame.
I don’t think that excuse is going to keep him from a fine, though.
Gosh, for someone who is very smart and only hires the best people, he sure does seem to end up employing hordes of fuckups and sleazeballs. Is a puzzlement.
There’s a reason the feds are talking to Cohen and Weisselbrg.
And Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago get seized instead.
the docs says he “earned” money at age 3. the whole family is just a bunch of con artists.
The specification of ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ doesn’t limit itself to offences in offices, does it? There are a lot of people hereabouts who would like to see him caught.
Does the IRS only fine the person who under-reported their income (or mis-reported, or however we classify this)? Don’t they also seek the taxes they were owed, plus interest? Probably still not enough to cripple Trump, but it would certainly get his attention.
Politically, it probably helps him. To his adoring base, they’ll see this:
[ul]
[li]So he paid less money to those liberals in New York? Bully for him![/li][li]Less money to the government so they can give it to illegals? Sweet liberal tears![/li][li]Of course he cheats on taxes! That’s what smart businessmen do.[/li][li]Oh yeah? What about Al Sharpton? I hear he owes millions in taxes and he’s not in jail![/li][/ul]
I dunno. I’d like it if someone did the math, but it certainly sounds like he evaded hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes going back decades. With interest that could be a significant fraction of his wealth.
While it would be good for schadenfreude, I would be somewhat concerned about his reaction to such a fine. Ignore it? Shut down that office? Remove sanction on Russia for a personal cash gift?
That’s the sticking point. The plain text does not specify, while the intent of some Founders arguably tends toward “while in office.” Without a clear interpretation from SCOTUS, I’d go with the default position that Congress can do what they like.
Which will be nothing at all.
But surely he realizes ( well, maybe not ), that even if that is completely true and he was completely innocent in the fraud - he still owes the money as well as the interest on the money. So, since the statute of limitations is up, it makes no difference except to his reputation. So it makes no difference.
This is lesson many of my friends learned the hard way. A neighbor of mine thought it was “too good to be true” when her monthly common charges on her condo went down at a time when everyone else’s went up. So she decided to be quiet and not question it.
Five years later the accounting mistake was discovered and she owed the building several thousand dollars. She requested a payment plan and got them to waive the interest but she was still undisputedly on the hook.
Same thing happened with a friend of mine that had a government job - her pension contributions were miscalculated and she ended up owing a lot of money ( with interest ) to her pension fund. And she was indisputably on the hook for it.
It’s a hard fact of finance and life.
Unless we change congress for their 3 monkey act.
Well, technically, yes, it should be limited to things that happen in office.
“High crimes and misdemeanors” does not mean “really serious criminal offenses.” They don’t have to be crimes at all, in fact. A “high crime” is an offense a person in public office makes that is specific to them being the holder of that office, whereby they don’t do their job properly. If Donald Trump cheated the IRS before he was President, that is certainly a crime, but it is not a high crime because it wasn’t related to a failure to execute his job as President.
High crimes are things like taking bribes, misusing public funds, stuff like that - things particular to abusing the office. Literally refusing to do the job at all would be a high crime.
Having said all that, no matter what “high crime” meant when they wrot the Constitution, a President could be impeached for anything at all; Congress decides what it means. As the Republicans will never vote to impeach or convict Trump for anything, it’s irrelevant; he cannot possibly be convicted even after the midterms (the Republicans will have more than a third of the Senate no matter how badly they do.) If somehow the Democrats had 67 seats in the Senate and a majority in the House, they’d impeach him for being an asshole. Nothing prevents either impeaching for any reason at all, or refusing to impeach even if he obviously deserves it.
What sort of financial liability are his siblings looking at? And how far does family loyalty go with the Trumps?
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Can a presidential pardon forgive fines levied by the IRS? Some of them, all of them, or none of them?