Trump Tax Returns

I will reiterate that it's koobookie, not kookie. Please do not alter members' usernames to something that seems derogatory, especially when that member has asked publicly before not to shorten it.

I too was curious to see if anyone would start a topic about the story. It is very extensive and after reading the entire thing, I have some questions and hope that the reporters do some more extensive digging. For example, if Ivanka Trump was indeed paid as an employee and concurrently as a consultant to avoid taxes, that seems illegal and finding documentation/evidence would be of relevance.

The bigger question is why have any faith in his business acumen at all? He consistently loses millions of dollars, has bankrupted 6 businesses, been caught illegally operating a nonprofit and forced to pay millions back, and can only get loans from a questionable bank with ties to Russian oligarchs, and will shortly owe millions to banks which represent unknown entities. That is a serious risk of being compromised by foreign entities such as China to whom he owes money.

It's nothing new the allegations that Trump has been involved with shady people and questionable sources of money. This report by the NY Times furthers that line of questioning. Trump fighting tooth and nail in court to continue to hide his financial records, having 500 LLCs to do business, is all highly suspicious no matter where you stand. Any politician who refuses to be transparent is suspect.

The NY Times article:
LONG-CONCEALED RECORDS SHOW TRUMP’S CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE
The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.
By Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire, NY Times | Sept. 27, 2020

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks.

Ethics experts see national security concern in Trump’s debt
By AAMER MADHANI and DEB RIECHMANN, AP News | September 28, 2020

Some food for thought:

Trump’s Business Partners Allegedly Involved In Human Trafficking, Mafia Matters, Probable Money Laundering
By Dan Alexander and Richard Behar, Forbes | August 20, 2020

A new report from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence offers a damning portrait of the people Donald Trump chose as his partners for potential projects in Russia. They include individuals with alleged connections to the mob, to Vladimir Putin and to human trafficking.

The group would comprise an extraordinary list of associates for any international businessman, let alone for the sitting president of the United States.

Trump Organization representatives did not respond to requests for comment. In 2016, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten insisted that the business conducts thorough due diligence on its outside partners. “We do extensive vetting on everyone we do business with,” he told Forbes at the time. “We do background checks on an international level. We do background checks on a local level. We check every available database commonly used. We use outside experts who specialize in this area. And that’s in addition to looking at the deal itself. So extensive vetting goes on.”

Doesn’t seem like it. Here are the details on the people connecting Trump to Russia.

Trump’s businesses are full of dirty Russian money. The scandal is that it’s legal.
Shell companies put figures from Putin’s Mafia into Trump Tower. Should that be worrying?
By Craig Unger, The Washington Post | March 29, 2019

If Trump Is Laundering Russian Money, Here’s How It Works
GARRETT M. GRAFF, Wired | May 11, 2018

How Russian Money Helped Save Trump’s Business
After his financial disasters two decades ago, no U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in.
BY MICHAEL HIRSH, Foreign Policy | DECEMBER 21, 2018,

Why Did Deutsche Bank Keep Lending to Donald Trump? — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast
The bank kept writing checks even after Trump defaulted on loans worth hundreds of millions and sued it. Now Congressional investigators are going to court to uncover the financial records behind their relationship.
by Heather Vogell, ProPublica, and Andrea Bernstein, WNYC, ProPublica | May 22, 2019

Twitter thread by Dan Alexander

1/ The New York Times #TrumpTaxReturns story is terrific. I had about a million thoughts as I was reading though. I'll be annotating those here, in this thread, for the next few hours.

Twitter thread by Tom Burgis

The @nytimes story on #TrumpTaxReturns says of Russia: "the tax records revealed no previously unknown financial connection — and, for the most part, lack the specificity required to do so". That's no surprise because. Here's why. (1/11)

Twitter thread by Adam Davidson

Money laundering is simple and not, necessarily, a sophisticated crime.

It is, at base, story telling. Someone has a ton of dough they can't spend without raising questions. It's from drug money or corruption or whatever.

1/

For a deeper dive into money laundering, peruse the articles here:
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists