Mythical Audits


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I have serious doubts that Donald Trump’s taxes have been under audit since 2015. First off, he’s not whining about it. He hasn’t been tweeting and screaming at the IRS for unfairly attacking him. He hasn’t accused the IRS of being a part of the “deep state” and going after him from directions by Obama and Hillary Clinton. So far, the IRS’s audit of him isn’t the greatest travesty ever committed against an American president and it’s not time to investigate the IRS. The second reason I have doubts is that this audit has been ongoing since 2015.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal has asked the IRS for six years of Trump’s tax returns. Neal made the request through an obscure but frequently used provision of the federal tax code that allows Congress’s tax-writing committees to view tax information on any filer. Trump and Republicans are up in arms over this.

Donald Trump has refused to release his taxes. With the exception of Gerald Ford, Trump was and is the only major party candidate not to release his taxes over the past forty years. Ford didn’t totally dodge the issue as he did release tax data. Trump’s lawyer, playing whatabout, asked, “Why is he not requesting information about the audits of previous presidents?” Previous presidents released their taxes, fucknut.

Trump has claimed he can’t release his taxes because they’re under audit. Do you really believe that the guy who claimed his New York-born father was born in Germany is telling the truth about the audit? Even if he is telling the truth, there is nothing that prevents him from releasing his taxes during an audit.

Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen told Congress, “What he didn’t want was to have an entire group of think tanks that are tax experts run through his tax return and start ripping it to pieces, and then he’ll end up in an audit and he’ll ultimately have taxable consequences, penalties, and so on.”

The IRS does make it a practice to audit the president’s returns so Trump’s recent filings may be under audit…but the Treasury Department is headed by Steve Mnuchin. While the IRS is supposed to be independent, this is the Trump era. Have you seen the Justice Department? Any audit happening right now by the IRS is an investigation of their boss. Congress has a right to review that. As it turned out, despite an audit, Nixon had underpaid.

Richard Nixon was under audit and stated, “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” Then, Nixon allowed Congress to examine his taxes WHILE they were under that audit. That debunks Trump’s claim that he can’t release his taxes. Trump’s lawyers promise to fight the release despite Congress having the authority to request them.

Maybe if you’re a Republican, you don’t have a problem with a president not releasing his taxes while also doing business with foreign nations. Trump sycophants don’t need oversight of the president or accountability. If it turns out the president is a crook, they won’t care.

Trump is afraid his taxes will expose where his money comes from. People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Why would anyone want to surrender that right?

Trump is also afraid it’ll be revealed he’s not as rich as he claims. We already know he’s not a great businessman, a great negotiator, or has the best brain. But the faith his supporters put into him, despite overwhelming evidence, is based upon him being rich. Trump is their idea of a billionaire and it doesn’t matter how racist, stupid, immature, or insecure he is because he’s rich. A poor 72-year-old would never get away with acting the way Trump does. What if it turns out he’s just a senile old man who’s rich, but not billionaire rich? Would his supporters lose faith? Would it destroy everything they believed in? Trump not being a billionaire might be the one thing that finally destroys his support from the wingnut base. For them, his not being rich would be far worse than his being a crook.

As Nixon said, “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook.” As it turned out, he was a crook. So is Donald Trump…and he’s not really a billionaire.

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9 thoughts on “Mythical Audits

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  1. “Trump sycophants don’t need oversight of the president or accountability. If it turns out the president is a crook, they won’t care.”

    Of course they don’t care- he’s pushing through all their pet projects and fulfilling their wettest dreams of pulling the federal judiciary as far to the right as he & Mr. McConnell possibly can.

    What a legacy they’ll leave! It will be decades before it’s undone.

    Liked by 4 people

      1. Mah God! I hope you’re right, I mean correct, randumbthoughts. What a sad legacy this administration is leaving for our future generations. 😦

        Liked by 3 people

  2. “As it turned out, he was a crook. So is Donald Trump…and he’s not really a billionaire.”

    Hillary Clinton said it best at the 2016 Al Smith Dinner:

    “It is great, also, to see Mayor Bloomberg here.
    (APPLAUSE)
    It’s a shame he’s not speaking tonight. I’m curious to hear what a billionaire has to say.
    (LAUGHTER)”

    http://time.com/4539979/read-transcript-hillary-clinton-speech-al-smith-dinner/

    BTW, this was the same dinner where 45* got booed:

    “Hillary is so corrupt, she got kicked off the Watergate Commission.
    (BOOING)
    How corrupt do you have to be to get kicked off the Watergate Commission? Pretty corrupt. Hillary is, and has been, in politics since the 70s. What’s her pitch? The economy is busted? The government’s corrupt? Washington is failing? “Vote for me. I’ve been working on these problems for 30 years. I can fix it”, she says.
    I wasn’t really sure if Hillary was going to be here tonight, because I guess you didn’t send her invitation by email. Or, maybe, you did and she just found out about it through the wonder of WikiLeaks.
    (LAUGHTER)
    We’ve learned so much from WikiLeaks. For example, Hillary believes that it’s vital to deceive the people by having one public policy —
    (BOOING)
    — and a totally different policy in private. That’s okay. I don’t know who they’re angry at Hillary, you or I. For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.
    Now some of you haven’t noticed, Hillary isn’t laughing as much as the rest of us. That’s because she knows the jokes. And all of the jokes were given to her in advance of the dinner by Donna Brazile. Which is – everyone knows, of course, Hillary’s belief that it takes a village, which only makes sense after all in places like Haiti, where she’s taken a number of them.
    (BOOING)
    Thank you. I don’t know – and I don’t want this evening without saying something nice about my opponent. Hillary has been in Washington a long time. She knows a lot about how government works. And according to her sworn testimony Hillary has forgotten more things than most of us will ever, ever, ever know. That I can tell you.
    (BOOING)
    We’re having some fun here tonight and that’s good.”

    http://time.com/4539981/read-the-transcript-donald-trump-speech-al-smith-dinner/

    Of course, reading transcripts gives you accuracy, but to truly enjoy it you should watch the whole thing:

    Liked by 3 people

  3. Plus, Warren Buffett proved Trump can release his tax information during an audit. He did it back in 2016, when Trump was originally claiming he couldn’t release his taxes. http://fortune.com/2016/10/10/warren-buffett-taxes-trump/

    But – whether or not a person can release their taxes is different than whether or not a person should release them. Some posts out there make good points – releasing his taxes will allow think tanks & tax specialists to comb through them, possibly coming up with more taxable problems for Trump.

    As for his base finding out he’s not “billionaire rich,” that won’t change a good gosh darn thing. They’ve accepted every lie he’s spewed; if they saw his taxes revealed he wasn’t a billionaire, Trump would spew some B.S. & they’d eat it up.

    Liked by 3 people

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