Ok, this is GQ so this should go without saying, but I feel the need to say that I’m not interested in any partisan opinions or anything about who’s right or who’s wrong, I just want factual answers – if they exist – to a couple of questions.
Question #1: Is there anything that prevents Trump’s financial firm from destroying all copies (digital, paper, whatever) of the documents being subpoenaed? I would assume that if they did, they would be fined and/or given prison time. Would the sentence for something like that be extremely severe, or does it more or less come down to basic respect for the law that would prevent them from violating the subpoena and destroying the documents?
Question #2: I assume that the IRS has copies of the tax returns. Is there any way to subpoena the IRS to get them, or is the IRS totally sacrosanct?
It’s a serious crime (spoliation) to destroy evidence that’s under subpoena. Additionally, financial firms have various document retention regulations that they must follow, generally keeping certain classes of documents for X number of years. So no accountant in their right mind would start throwing stuff out. But not all accountants are in their right minds. I’m sure as soon as this whole kerfuffle started that everything was collected and has lived in boxes in the corner of a lawyer’s office while waiting for the litigation to finish.
The IRS has been subpoenaed by Congress and NY prosecutors for the returns; there is litigation pending for that as well. The accounting firm will have much more information than the IRS, though - tax returns just have the numbers written on them.
They are seeking a lot of the same or similar types of information from both the IRS and the accounting firm. They will be looking for discrepancies between what Trump told the IRS and what Trump told the accounting firm.
For example, Trump is accused of down-stating some of his assets or income to the IRS to reduce his taxes (remember, he said during the debates that paying zero taxes “makes me smart”), while up-stating some of his assets (e.g., the size of some of his buildings) to inflate their alleged value so he could get a bigger loan from Deutsche Bank.
So they want the supposedly “same” information from multiple sources to try to spot discrepancies like that.
I guess the issue too is whether this is a criminal case (apparently seems it is) or a civil case. In a criminal case it is an offense to destroy data which is under a subpoena, as Freido says. Not sure about civil cases.
I guess a parallel question is what other repercussions - I gather a lawyer who engages in these activities may be disbarred, and I assume something similar for accountants? Lose your accreditation and you cannot sign off on company documents as an accredited accountant, for what that’s worth?
I recall some documentary about Trump’s legal troubles in the early 2000’s, where requests for documentation in civil cases were met with responses that the documents no longer existed, that they were destroyed as a matter of policy, not to escape subpoenas. Theoretically that means the other side’s version should prevail absent data to counter it, but of course they still have to prove the basic facts.
Thank you everyone. I had forgotten about the over- vs. under-valuing of assets, so makes sense that they’d want to get info from both Trump and the IRS.
They’re looking to get the info from Mazars (Trump’s accounting firm) and the IRS. Mazars has long since announced that they will comply with the subpoenas once all Trump’s court fighting is finally finally final, if the subpoenas are ultimately upheld. So Trump has that to sweat about.