President Donald Trump is relentlessly committed to keeping House Democrats and other concerned interests from being able to exercise oversight of his administration. This weekend, he melted down on social media for all the world to see over their ongoing efforts to obtain his tax returns, asserting that concerns about possible wide-ranging fraud on his part are nothing but a “radical left” agenda. Apparently he just wants presidents committed crimes to be a thing now.
He ranted:
‘I won the 2016 Election partially based on no Tax Returns while I am under audit (which I still am), and the voters didn’t care. Now the Radical Left Democrats want to again relitigate this matter. Make it a part of the 2020 Election!’
The way he says this makes it seem like he thinks letting people actually see his tax returns would have detracted from his shot at victory in 2016. He asserts that he won “based on no Tax Returns” — so what’s in there?
There are at least a few ideas floating around of what might be so concerning to the president in the documents. For one, he’s faced allegations of inflating and deflating his assets at will in manners that would bring him the most financial benefit. He’s alleged to have used those schemes to get out of various property taxes and to try and secure financial backing from partners like Deutsche Bank for both pursued and abandoned business endeavors. Investigations into the issues from the New York state attorney general’s office to the halls of Congress are currently underway.
There’s another newly pressing question — what is the real financial health of the president’s businesses? The New York Times revealed a decade of his tax information from the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which time he at times lost more than any other taxpayer in the United States. Overall, he claimed more than $1 billion in losses over that period — so maybe his more recent tax returns are hiding similar further embarrassment.
There’s also the question of whether the president has benefited from money laundering, which has at times engulfed one of his longtime lenders Deutsche Bank.
Recently, days after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) that he wouldn’t be cooperating with his duly filed, legal request for six years of Trump’s personal and business tax documents, Neal issued a subpoena for the material. In other words — yes, Trump, Democrats are hoping to litigate this issue. They’re not letting you off the hook.
Check out Twitter’s response…
Featured Image via screenshot
