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Tag: tax fraud
James Comer

Raskin: Oversight Chair Worked With Trump Lawyers To Kill Tax Probe

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer is putting up a perfect display of Republican priorities, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, is on the case.

On the one hand, Comer is not only dropping an agreement with Mazars, the longtime accounting firm for Donald Trump, to produce documents relating to foreign government spending at Trump properties during Trump’s time in the White House—he’s coordinating with Trump’s lawyers about the move. And at the same time, Comer is broadening his investigation into Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden and someone with no government role whatsoever, to demand banking records for three of Hunter Biden’s business associates.

Pointing out that documents Mazars already turned over to the committee show hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from governments including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China to Trump’s businesses, Raskin wrote, in a letter to Comer, “On January 19, 2023, Patrick Strawbridge, counsel for Donald Trump, wrote to counsel for Mazars, stating ‘I do not know the status of Mazars [sic] production, but my understanding is that the Committee has no interest in forcing Mazars to complete it and is willing to release it from further obligations under the settlement agreement.’”

Raskin continued, “When counsel for Mazars sought clarification, Mr. Strawbridge confirmed this direction had been provided to him, twice, by the Acting General Counsel of the House of Representatives, in his capacity as counsel to the Committee.” This is, Raskin wrote, “an astonishing delegation of the legislative power of the Chair to a twice-impeached former President whose Executive Branch actions are still actively under Committee investigation.”

At the same time, Comer subpoenaed Bank of America seeking 14 years of financial records for three of Hunter Biden’s business associates. This isn’t just records of a specific business. It was a demand for “all financial records” from the moment Joe Biden became vice president until now.

“These documents go well beyond any business deal with Hunter Biden or CEFC,” Raskin wrote. “They intrude into private details of Mr. Walker’s and his family’s finances: how much he pays for his child’s dance lessons, when he has been to the hospital, how many parking tickets he has paid, how often he eats at Papa John’s or has coffee at Starbucks, and how much he spends on groceries at Safeway.”

To House Republicans, Walker’s participation with Hunter Biden in a failed business venture makes this information a more legitimate target for investigation than evidence of foreign governments spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at Trump properties. As Raskin accurately summed up, “I fear this wildly overbroad subpoena suggests that your interest in this investigation is not in pursuing defined facts or informing public legislation but conducting a dragnet of political opposition research on behalf of former President Trump.”

So: Information on how a former president and would-be future president profited, while in office, from foreign government spending is not of interest to the Republicans in control of the House Oversight Committee.

But: Detailed personal financial records of the business associates of a person who is not in the government are at the center of what these Republicans are doing.

It’s obviously partisan—Republicans want to investigate Democrats and end investigations of Republicans—but it’s more than that. The difference in the closeness to power of what and who is under investigation is telling. It’s the guy who was in the White House vs. people who did business with the son of the guy in the White House, with no reason, despite multiple investigations, to believe that the president has had any involvement in his son’s business dealings, let alone steered U.S. policy in directions favorable to his son.

Comer and his Republican buddies would like voters to believe that, wow, if they’re demanding financial records of people who just did business with Hunter Biden, there must be a there there. But the reality is that what it shows is that they have nothing on the president. If they even thought they did, they’d be investigating him.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Paid Little Tax While Claiming Huge Losses And Dubious Deductions

Trump Paid Little Tax While Claiming Huge Losses And Dubious Deductions

On Tuesday evening, the House Ways and Means Committee voted 24 to 16 to release information it has obtained on Donald Trump’s tax returns. Some of that information has already been made available to the public. The report shows that Trump, while running as a successful billionaire, reported massive losses on his business dealings in the years just before entering the White House.

The information released to the public includes the years 2015 through 2020. In that first year, Trump claims almost $77 million loss in the form of “other income” and claims a $21 million charitable contribution in the form of a “conservation easement.” As Laura Clawson reported back in 2020, that easement was actually part of a shady real estate deal in which Trump used one of his typically overvalued assessments to turn a money-losing golf property into a tax break that he could spread out over years of returns. That’s just one in a long list of things that the House committee found questionable in Trump’s 2015 return.

In all, over the six years of returns, Trump reported making money only in 2018 and 2019. He used a combination of reported losses and questionable deductions to keep his tax bills to $750 in 2016, $750 in 2017, and $0 in 2020. Trump did pay $641,935 in 2015, but don’t worry. He still has a “claim for refund” filed for that year based on a claim that he was owed more for “historic restoration.” If that claim is successful, it will return that 2015 money to Trump.

Trump’s taxes were kept low by two factors: reported losses and those big “charitable deductions.” That didn’t just include Trump’s big $21 million “conservation” deduction (generated by theoretically turning the entire property into home lots, assigning a $2 million per value to those lots, then valuing Trump’s contribution as if he had donated 10 of these nonexistent lots).

The nature of Trump’s reported losses is itself more than a little questionable. For example, in 2015, Trump reported that he made money from income, interest, dividends, capital gains, and other gains. Those last two added up to $43 million. Still, he ended up reporting a net loss after reporting $76 million in losses as “other income.” That huge loss was mostly a carryover of reported operating losses in previous years—losses that Trump would keep pressing forward to erase potential income year after year.

Overall, here’s what Trump reported as income year by year.

TRUMP'S REPORTED INCOME

This gives Trump a reported $54 million loss over these six years. In those years when he did pay taxes, he paid effectively four percent of his reported income in 2018, and three percent in 2019. The 2015 numbers involved paying taxes that carried over from the previous year, but Trump is still asking the IRS to reduce that year to no more than $750.

In the short time the returns have been available to the House committee, they’ve identified a number of issues with each year of the returns. That includes not just multiple questionable charitable deductions, but a lot of deductions that are reported as large “cash” payments for which there doesn’t appear to be documentation. The committee also notes the use of Trump’s 500+ sole proprietorship businesses as a means of reporting everyday costs of living, and some expensive hobbies, as if they are legitimate business deductions.

Trump also appears to have written off over $2 million in property taxes as an income deduction; the committee notes that New York law caps that deduction at $10,000.

What’s also striking is that in every single year, including 2018, Trump’s core businesses—his golf courses, hotels, and real estate—operated at a reported loss. If Donald Trump actually makes money at anything, it’s not any of the areas in which he brags about being a success. In his best year, Trump reported that he lost $11 million on real estate.

Whether the discrepancies in Trump’s taxes will lead to fines or charges of tax fraud isn’t certain. What is certain is that with an incoming Republican majority in the House, any investigation into Trump is likely to be completely discarded.

All other presidential candidates over the last two decades have released their own returns during the campaign, but Trump did not. Though the House has a legal right to review the returns of anyone, obtaining these returns involved a multi-year court battle with Trump objecting and appealing at every possible stage to delay the delivery of the returns to the Congress. He almost managed to outlast the Congress … but he didn’t quite make it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

New York Attorney General Sues Trump, Adult Children For Massive Fraud

New York Attorney General Sues Trump, Adult Children For Massive Fraud

By Karen Freifeld, Jonathan Stempel and Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Donald Trump and his adult children were sued for "numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation" on Wednesday by New York state's attorney general in a civil investigation into the former U.S. president's business practices, court records showed.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York state court in Manhattan, accused the Trump Organization of wrongdoing in preparing Trump's annual statements of financial condition from 2011 to 2021. It also named the Trump Organization, the former president's son Donald Trump Jr,. and his daughter Ivanka Trump as defendants.

Attorney General Letitia James said Trump and the Trump Organization misstated the values of its real estate properties to obtain favorable loans and tax benefits. She said she was referring allegations of criminal wrongdoing to federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the Internal Revenue Service.

"With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system," James said in a statement.

The lawsuit marks one of the biggest legal blows for Trump since he left office in January 2021. Trump is considering running again for president in 2024.

James told reporters she is seeking to have the defendants give up all the benefits he obtained from fraud, estimated at $250 million. The lawsuit also seeks to bar Trump and his children from running companies in New York, and to bar the Trump Organization from engaging in real estate transactions. James has been conducting a civil investigation into Trump's business practices for more than three years.

The Republican former president has denied any wrongdoing and described James' probe as a politically motivated witch hunt. James is a Democrat. The Trump Organization has called James' allegations "baseless."

Wednesday's lawsuit followed a contentious investigation in which James accused Trump, his company, and some family members of using delay tactics to ignore subpoenas and avoid testifying.

Trump on August 10 declined to answer questions in a lengthy, closed-door deposition at the office of the attorney general, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination more than 400 times.

Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump agreed to sit for depositions only after court decisions required it.

Another of Trump's children, Eric Trump, invoked the right against self-incrimination more than 500 times in a 2020 deposition.

Trump has been beset with legal troubles since leaving the White House.

The FBI conducted a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Aug. 8 as part of a criminal investigation into his handling of presidential records including classified material.

Trump also faces a criminal investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

He has denied wrongdoing in the various probes.

James' civil probe is separate from a criminal tax fraud probe against the Trump Organization by Manhattan's district attorney, Alvin Bragg.

The company is scheduled to stand trial in October, accused of paying off-the-books benefits to employees. Its former longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded guilty and will testify against the company.

James is assisting Bragg in his criminal probe.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel, Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Will Dunham and Alistair Bell)

New York Attorney General's Probe Of Trump Asset Fraud Is 'Nearly Complete'

New York Attorney General's Probe Of Trump Asset Fraud Is 'Nearly Complete'

The office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said it has almost completed a civil investigation into the Trump Organization’s “nesting doll” assets.

Investigators told a court Monday that they’re waiting to search two cellphones belonging to former President Trump and two computers owned by his longtime assistant Rhona Graff, per CNN.

“The process is near an end,” said Kevin Wallace, senior enforcement counsel in the attorney general's office.

James’ office hired a third-party firm to search Trump Organization’s files, and it found 151 people or entities that may possess documents sought by the office. Still, Wallace stressed the office’s focus on finding the "most important” pieces of information because, under the statute of limitations, the office had until Saturday to file its lawsuit.

Although the tolling agreement with the Trump Organization will end on Saturday, the attorney general’s office could take several weeks to decide how to proceed with its investigation.

On Monday, New York State Judge Arthur Engoron held Trump in civil contempt for an inadequate response to a subpoena by James’ office and slapped the former president with a $10,000 per day fine — a ruling Trump appealed on Wednesday.

"Given the upcoming end of the tolling agreement we will likely need to bring some kind of enforcement action in the near future to preserve our rights," Wallace said.

Lawyers for the attorney general’s office agreed to a meeting with Trump Organization’s attorneys to, according to Wallace, flesh out what “appropriate resolutions might look like” in a case that has hung for three years over Trump, who has called James a “racist” and the investigation, a “witch hunt.”

In court filings, the attorney general’s office has said it believes Trump Organization made misleading statements and omissions in its financial statements to lenders and insurers to get tax benefits.

Trump and his children, Ivanka Trump and Trump Jr., have failed to cooperate with investigators and appealed an earlier ruling by the same judge demanding they sit for depositions. However, Eric Trump was deposed in 2020, and he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times.

"The company relies more on its people than its systems," Wallace said to the court, noting that hundreds of entities in the Trump Organization moved millions of dollars around many business units using different accounting systems.

Wallace alluded to Trump’s golf course in Jupiter, Florida, purchased for $5 million in 2012, stuffed into a financial statement with $2 billion of club assets, and suddenly valued by the company at $46 million. Investigators are yet to determine where the extra $41 million originated.

"Each of these assets is like a Russian nesting doll," Wallace added.

A lawyer for Trump Organization, Alina Habba, dismissed Wallace’s claims, arguing that the company’s operations mirror “how real estate companies operate."