- A court-appointed monitor in Trump’s fraud case said his company filed disclosures with “errors.”
- Tucked in a footnote is also an indication he may have committed tax fraud, per The Daily Beast.
- The letter indicates Trump may have lied about the existence of a $48 million loan.
… And does it actually get enforced by the justice system?
So far the only actual repercussions have come from civil suits, not anything from the DOJ. Between timid leaders, corrupt judges, and infinite appeals you can do anything once your wealth untethers you from the rule of law. Become and oligarch and you’re able to do whatever you like as long as you don’t hurt the money and power of other rich people. The nation writ large can go hang.
Haven’t we all heard this growing up: “If you don’t punish them, they’ll just keep doing it.”
The IRS had been chronically underfunded for decades specifically to allow the wealthy to get away with this. They got some extra funding through the IRA, so hopefully they can go after more guys like him.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.””
I hate that this is such a ‘meh’ moment for me. This is just so petty and basic by his standards. Barely even news.
In all likelihood it’s a “meh” moment that’s going to seal his legal fate.
We are still playing the ‘this is the one’ game I see
I don’t know if this is the one or not, I’m just saying that if he does get in trouble it’ll likely be from something boring like tax evasion, than something exciting like treason.
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haha yep, “walls are really closing in on him now.”
The fact that this orange dotard’s meager wealth is enough to escape any form of justice is a testament to how broken our system of government has truly become.
The walls keep closing on him but he has the money to buy an unlimited number of 12 foot ladders
Is it though? Because he clearly admitted showing classified documents to people, and then lying about what happened.
If he can share national secrets with other countries that are known to fund his businesses and still run for president, this ain’t gonna stop him. Then once he becomes president he makes all this go away, again.
You’re FAR more optimistic than I am about that…
If it was either of us we’d be in jail every second we didnt pay that back + a decade of interest and penalties. Apparently it’s not enough to keep a conman from running for President though.
even though this amount of money would be life changing, even if it were split between 100 people. man, we are desensitized.
No way! Trump wouldn’t just go and evade taxes, would he? Surely this must be some sort of mistake.
What a weird thing to brag about.
STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLE
OH YEAH? BUT HOW IS HE GONNA PROFIT FROM BREAKING THE LAW THEN, HUH? Haven’t considered that, have ya?
Cool, maybe the government will spend the next 4 years pulling a case together about it.
Meanwhile, multiple Joe Schmoes will be charged, prosecuted, and sentenced within that same time period for doing something relatively similar.
Here is the article
Tucked into a footnote in a letter written by former federal judge Barbara Jones, the court-appointed special monitor overseeing Donald Trump’s New York business fraud case is a bombshell that appears to indicate the former president may have engaged in massive tax evasion, according to a new report released by The Daily Beast.
The letter, first reported by The Messenger, was delivered Friday to update Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron on Jones’ findings while reviewing the former president’s business dealings through his company, the Trump Organization.
In it, Jones writes that the financial information filed to her by Trump’s team has contained “incomplete” or “inconsistent” disclosures containing multiple “errors.” However, she describes Trump and his businesses as “cooperative” with her investigation.
But buried in the sixth footnote of the 12-page letter is what the Daily Beast indicated is a clue that Trump may have evaded taxes on $48 million in income, with Jones writing that the massive sum — which Trump has claimed for years that he owes as a debt to one of his companies — never existed.
“When I inquired about this loan, I was informed that there are no loan agreements that memorialize the loan, but that it was a loan that was believed to be between Donald J. Trump, individually, and Chicago Unit Acquisition for $48 million,” Jones wrote.
She added: “However, in recent discussions with the Trump Organization, it indicated that it has determined that this loan never existed — and thus that it would be removed from any upcoming forms submitted to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) and would also be removed from subsequent versions of MAML,” Jones wrote, referring to corporate financial statements filed by the company.
Jones and Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. A ‘pretty brazen’ plot
Garten told The Daily Beast an “internal loan” wherein Trump “leant money to the entity that he owns” does exist.
“That’s one of many inaccuracies contained in the monitor’s letter, which we will be addressing with the court,” Garten told the outlet.
However, per the Daily Beast, as recently as October, Trump has claimed in financial disclosures that he owes the sum to his company, Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC, listing his debt as more than $50 million.
The discrepancies, if true, would indicate that the disclosures Trump has filed with the federal government were intentionally submitted with inaccuracies related to the debt equating to tens of millions of dollars. “It would appear, assuming Judge Jones’ letter is accurate, that this amounts to tax evasion,” Martin Lobel, a tax lawyer, told The Daily Beast.
He added: “This explains why the Republicans have been so intent on cutting the IRS’s budget, because they don’t want it to be able to audit transactions like this.”
The $48 million central to this issue has been scrutinized before. In 2016, the then-candidate for president told The New York Times that he purchased an outstanding loan from several banks he owed money to and, instead of retiring it, chose to keep the debt outstanding and pay interest on it to himself.
However, in 2019, Mother Jones reported a significant portion of Trump’s debt was forgiven by the hedge fund he owed money to after he paid about half of it.
So, instead of paying income taxes of up to 39% on the forgiven debt, the outlet reported, Trump “invented a loan — and then parked it.” Debt parking is the process of purchasing debt using a corporation to avoid paying income taxes on it. The maneuver is legal as long as the borrower intends to repay the loan but is illegal to engage in indefinitely.
Adam Levitin, a Georgetown University law professor specializing in commercial real estate finance, told Mother Jones at the time that the plot was “pretty brazen,” adding: “if he didn’t actually buy the loan, this is just garden-variety fraud.”
“While the reasons behind claiming this fake loan are still unknown, at the very least he misled the government for years about his finances,” Jordan Libowitz, communications director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast. “It appears that Trump knowingly and intentionally broke the law. The only question is how many laws.”
Tucked into a footnote in a letter written by former federal judge Barbara Jones, the court-appointed special monitor overseeing Donald Trump’s New York business fraud case is a bombshell that appears to indicate the former president may have engaged in massive tax evasion, according to a new report released by The Daily Beast.
We really need to ban the word bombshell when it comes to drumpf. We have now a Hiroshima collection of “bombshells” and he’s still wearing suits instead of orange jumpsuits.
Trump has been comparing himself to Capone a lot lately.
ooooh the special monitor!! tax evasion!! they’ll get him this time!!
They just “got him” on the E Jean Carroll Defamation case and they literally already “got him” in this very case, the Trump org has been found liable for fraud they are just sorting out damages.
I don’t know why people keep posting the “nothing ever happens to him” comments. They didn’t for a while because he was president and couldn’t be charged. Now he isn’t and every case so far has gone against him.
It might be the part where there’s a good chance he’ll be the next president again that’s causing that cynicism.
Your average person isn’t going to go count by count and see how he’s been punished, they’re going to see a guy who is still rich, still not in jail, and still the likely presidential nominee with a good chance of taking the office, and they’ll surmise that nothing ever happens to him.
And they wouldn’t be wrong.
Is the Special Monitor the one with remote control that only the grownups can use? Or the one in the doctors office with the weird medical advert channel?
