Tag: Trump taxes

House urges Supreme Court to enforce subpoenas for Trump’s financial records

Delay in subpoenas would be deprive Congress information it needs to secure elections, court filing says

The House cited 2020 election security concerns Wednesday when it urged the Supreme Court not to delay the enforcement of congressional subpoenas for financial records of President Donald Trump and his business from Deutsche Bank and Capital One Financial Corporation.

Any harm to Trump for allowing the enforcement of the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees would be less severe than Congress not getting information it needs to protect the elections from foreign influence, House attorneys argued in a Supreme Court filing.

The House said a delay in the subpoenas would be deprive “the peoples’ representatives of information they need to secure the nation’s 2020 elections from foreign influence and otherwise exercise their constitutional responsibilities wisely before their time for doing so expires.”

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Trump asks Supreme Court to shield financial records from House Democrats

The Hill logoPresident Trump has asked the Supreme Court to shield his financial records from the Democratic-led House Oversight and Reform Committee, in the latest case to bring questions over separation of powers to the justices.

The case marks the second time Trump has appealed to the high court to prevent the disclosure of financial documents and sets the stage for a potentially groundbreaking ruling on the extent of congressional oversight authority and presidential power.

In their Wednesday petition to the court, filed ahead of a Thursday deadline, Trump’s personal attorneys warned the justices that a lower court ruling in favor of the Democratic lawmakers would set a dangerous precedent if allowed to stand.

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Appeals court rules Deutsche Bank must turn over Trump financial records to House

The Hill logoDeutsche Bank and Capital One must comply with a House subpoena seeking a broad range of financial documents related to President Trumpand his businesses, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled 2-1in favor of ordering “prompt compliance” with the subpoenas from the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees.

“The public interest in vindicating the Committees’ constitutional authority is clear and substantial,” the judges wrote in the decision.

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Trump tax records reveal new inconsistencies — this time for Trump Tower

AlterNet logoDocuments show the president’s company reported different numbers — higher ones to lenders, lower ones to tax officials — for Trump’s signature building. Last month, ProPublica revealed a similar pattern in two other Trump buildings.

Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.

In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.

View the complete November 27 article by Heather Vogell from ProPublica on the AlterNet website here.

Supreme Court stays House subpoena for Trump financial records

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court on Monday granted President Trump’s request to temporarily stay a subpoena for his financial records from the House Oversight and Reform Committee while the court considers whether to take up his appeal in the case.

Trump filed an emergency request on Nov. 15 to the Supreme Court asking the justices to block a subpoena from House Democrats after a lower court said his accounting firm must turn over his financial documents.

The justices gave Trump until noon on Dec. 5 to file a formal petition to the court.

View the complete November 25 article by John Kruzel on The Hill website here.

Supreme Court precedents do not shield Trump financial records, House, prosecutors argue

Washington Post logoThere is no precedent for keeping a House committee from examining President Trump’s financial records, lawyers for the House told the Supreme Court on Thursday, and “each day of delay harms Congress by depriving it of important information it needs to carry out its constitutional responsibilities.”

House General Counsel Doug N. Letter said in a brief that the court’s precedents involving Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton make clear that the chief executive enjoys no special privilege to be free from investigation or legal action.

The Supreme Court “has established that even a private citizen may invoke the courts’ subpoena power against the president in appropriate cases,” the brief states. “In light of that settled law, it would hardly make sense to say that Congress, a coordinate branch, cannot use its own subpoena power in a matter involving the president.”

View the complete November 21 article by Robert Barnes on The Washington Post website here.

Supreme Court temporarily blocks House subpoena of Trump financial records

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court has issued a temporary stay of an appeals court ruling that granted House Democrats access to President Trump‘s financial records, Chief Justice John Roberts announced Monday.

Trump’s lawyers had appealed the ruling, which was set to go into effect Wednesday.

The subpoena from the House Oversight and Reform Committee will be unenforceable while the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case or prolong Roberts’s administrative stay. The panel is seeking eight years of Trump’s financial records from his accounting firm.

View the complete November 18 article by Harper Neidig on The Hill website here.

IRS whistleblower case advances as Senate staff looks at whether political appointee meddled with audit of Trump or Pence

Washington Post logoSenate aides spoke to the whistleblower, and follow-up interviews are expected.

Two senators are looking into a whistleblower’s allegations that at least one political appointee at the Treasury Department may have tried to interfere with an audit of President Trump or Vice President Pence, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, a sign that lawmakers are moving to investigate the complaint lodged by a senior staffer at the Internal Revenue Service.

Staff members for Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, met with the IRS whistleblower earlier this month, those people said. Follow-up interviews are expected to further explore the whistleblower’s allegations.

It could not be learned to what extent the senators consider the whistleblower a credible source. Trump administration officials have previously played down the complaint’s significance and suggested that it is politically motivated.

View the complete November 18 article by Jeff Stein and Tom Hamburger on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Tax Return Case Confronts Supreme Court With a Momentous Choice

New York Times logoRichard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton sustained unanimous losses when they sought to withhold evidence, suggesting that President Trump may face an uphill fight.

WASHINGTON — In a matter of days, President Trump will ask the Supreme Court to rule on his bold claim that he is absolutely immune from criminal investigation while he remains in office. If the court agrees to hear the case, its decision is likely to produce a major statement on the limits of presidential power — and to test the independence of the court itself.

Mr. Trump has been the subject of countless investigations and lawsuits since he took office, including a 22-month inquiry by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel appointed to look into his campaign’s ties to Russia. But the new case, concerning an investigation by Manhattan prosecutors into hush-money payments to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump, will be the Supreme Court’s first chance to consider the president’s arguments that he is beyond the reach of the justice system.

The case concerns a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat. On Monday, the federal appeals court in Manhattan rejected Mr. Trump’s request to block the subpoena, which seeks eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns.

View the complete November 5 article by Adam Lipton on The New York Times website here.

Trump allegedly lied on his taxes as recently as 2017, documents show

We already knew that President Trump’s tax practices have been called into question. The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation last year that showed that the so-called “self-made billionaire” had in fact used a complex series of tax dodges to inherit hundreds of millions of dollars from his father by undervaluing the family’s real estate holdings on tax returns. It was of course assumed that Trump had employed various sketchy tax schemes — why else would he go to such trouble to avoid handing over his tax returns? — but the specifics of what he’d been up to over the past decade had been elusive. But in a new investigation published Wednesday, ProPublica has provided a glimpse into how Trump has systematically used reporting discrepancies on his real estate empire to avoid paying his fair share of taxes.

The report is based on documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, and it shows how Trump’s organization gave different information to his lender than he did to New York City tax authorities regarding occupancy, expenses, and profits for several of his buildings. For the taxman, Trump allegedly undervalued his assets, so that his taxes would be artificially lower; for lenders, he allegedly inflated the numbers to make things seem more profitable. The discrepancy between the reports constitutes “versions of fraud,” Nancy Wallace, a finance professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told ProPublica. “This kind of stuff is not OK.” Continue reading “Trump allegedly lied on his taxes as recently as 2017, documents show”