What's in them?!

Consider:

nytimes.com/2020/08/20/nyre … e=Homepage

[b]'A federal judge on Thursday rejected President Trump’s latest effort to block the Manhattan district attorney from obtaining his tax returns, roundly dismissing Mr. Trump’s arguments that the prosecutor’s grand jury subpoena was “wildly overbroad” and issued in bad faith.

'The ruling by Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan marked another setback for the president in his yearlong fight to block the subpoena.

‘The conflict has already reached the Supreme Court once and could end up there again as Mr. Trump’s lawyers quickly filed papers saying he would appeal. The legal wrangling means a decision is unlikely before the November presidential election.’[/b]

Just out of curiosity, why do you suppose Trump is so keen on keeping his returns from being “open to public scrutiny”? What is in them that might be most damaging to him? His connection to foreign governments? The fact that as a businessman he’s more a failure than he’d like others to know? That he paid virtually no taxes at all while intent on “draining the swamp” that is crony capitalism in Washington?

And, who knows, maybe someday they actually will be made available for all the rest of us to see.

Then we can compare what we think is spooking him from what he damn well ought to be spooked about.

not to mention that another, another close confidant of
IQ45 has been arrested for yet another crime…

the number of the “best people” been arrested or charged with
a crime or just flat our pleaded guilty of over 30 people…

how many were arrested or charged during the Obama administration?

less then 5… in eight years compared to IQ45 3 and half years…

just the sheer number of people arrested and charge or just plead
guilty show us the base corruption of the IQ45 administration…

how can you support a president who has had multiple number of
close administration officials charged or arrested for crimes?

if these people are the “best” people IQ45 knew, then he is a criminal
and a thief, for people surround themselves with people they know
and trust and feel comfortable with…and IQ45 only knows criminals and thief’s…

his administration has been an administration of like minded individuals
whose only goal has been to steal and corrupt and destroy
the America that has been, until now, “the shining city on the hill”

defending IQ45 is to defend criminals and thief’s and liars…

I am glad those defenders of IQ45 admit to their own comfort level
of defending criminals, thief’s and liars…

to defend IQ45 is to defend corruption on a massive scale, is to defend
over 20,000 lies over 3.5 years in office…defending IQ45 is to defend breaking
the laws and trampling on the very constitution that IQ45 pledged to
obey and protect…I am glad the supporters of IQ45 are so open
to supporting the violations of the laws and constitution of the United
States of America…

I support the obedience to the laws and the following of constitution,
which makes me in direct contrast to the followers of IQ45…

if you believe it, you must own it…

so own your support of someone so dedicated to destroying
the constitution and the laws of the United States of America…

Kropotkin

And around and around it goes…

washingtonpost.com/election … OQO33AVYTM

[b]'NEW YORK — A federal appeals court Tuesday blocked the release of Trump’s tax returns and other financial records to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office — a temporary win for the president in his protracted battle to keep the local prosecutor’s office from obtaining the trove of documents in conjunction with an ongoing criminal probe.

The ruling came as one judge on the three-member panel pressed the district attorney’s team about the scope of its grand-jury probe, saying the request seems “really very broad” as the president’s attorneys have argued.

John Walker Jr., one of three judges hearing arguments at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals over whether to prevent the subpoena from being enforced while further litigation in the case continues, asked a lawyer for the district attorney’s office how one would determine whether its request for Trump’s records is, in fact, “very broad and might engage in some fishing.”'[/b]

It being the law of course. Or, perhaps, politics?

Now, all we need is a precise philosophical definition of “broad” and “fishing” to finally settle this thing once and for all.

Yo, Wendy, let’s start with you!

“Trump Could Be Investigated for Tax Fraud, D.A. Says for First Time”

nytimes.com/2020/09/21/nyre … e=Homepage

[b]'The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been locked in a yearlong legal battle with President Trump over obtaining his tax returns, suggested for the first time in a court filing on Monday that it had grounds to investigate him and his businesses for tax fraud.

'The filing by the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., offered rare insight into the office’s investigation of the president and his business dealings, which began more than two years ago.

'Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has never revealed the scope of his office’s criminal inquiry, citing grand jury secrecy. The investigation has been stalled by the fight over a subpoena that the office issued in August 2019 for eight years of the president’s tax returns.

'Lawyers for Mr. Trump have said the subpoena should be blocked, calling it “wildly overbroad” and politically motivated. Mr. Vance responded to that argument in a carefully worded new filing that did not directly accuse Mr. Trump or any of his businesses or associates of wrongdoing and took pains to avoid disclosing details about the inquiry.

'However, prosecutors listed news reports and public testimony that alleged misconduct by Mr. Trump and his businesses. The reports, prosecutors wrote, would justify a grand jury inquiry into a range of possible crimes, including tax and insurance fraud and falsification of business records. It was the first time the office had suggested tax fraud might be among the possible areas of investigation.[/b]

Well, we now know that whatever is in them might result in some serious legal problems for the president.

And then this:

'The president has said he expects the dispute over the subpoena will end up in the Supreme Court. “This is a continuation of the witch hunt, the greatest witch hunt in history,” Mr. Trump said last month.

Maklng a 6 to 3 conservative majority all the more vital for him.

Finally…

[b]'The appeals court scheduled oral arguments on the matter for Friday. However the court rules, either party could take the case back to the Supreme Court, making it unlikely the dispute will be decided before the presidential election on Nov. 3.

‘Even if Mr. Vance’s prosecutors ultimately obtain Mr. Trump’s tax records, grand jury secrecy rules make it unlikely the materials will become public anytime soon. They might only surface if Mr. Vance’s office brings charges and the tax returns are introduced as evidence in court.’[/b]

Really, what are the odds that the American people will be apprised of what is in them anytime soon. If at all.

This is in them:

nytimes.com/interactive/202 … e=Homepage

[b]'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.’[/b]

I’m not really clear as to whether these revelations encompass the entirety of the returns, or just a part of them.

Thus:

‘The returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in recent memory. In Mr. Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors, opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.’

That Donald “art of the deal” Trump is as shitty a businessman as he is a president has got to be embarrassing for him. But it’s what might send him to jail that his most fierce opponents are intent on bringing to light.

Uh, right?

Yeah, but he is like a Houdini , he is always able to get out of tight spots. Of coursed Houdini failed in his final trick.

Yes, but Houdini was successful only insofar as the audience couldn’t figure out how he did the tricks. With Trump, the rich and the powerful couldn’t care less how he does them. As for his blue collar “base”, most of them are not even aware that they are being tricked at all. Keep them distracted with issues revolving around race and religion and law and order and guns and sexual perversions and, sure, you might stay in office four more years.

Anyway, with his taxes, most liberals are only concerned with the part where his “tricks” might have been illegal. Will the “deep state” crony capitalists in Washington and New York actually go so far as to arrest him, to try him, to put him in prison?!

Not in a million years if my own understanding of “the system” is correct.

It depends how Trumps masters perceive the pulse. If it’s too soon and the backlash of the public is severe… they’ll throw Trump under the bus in a heartbeat to look good.

Ec’

Biggy and me have been going on about the reductive process below the contextual issues surrounding self valuing , …

It may be a remote possibility, but like Houdini, admittedly. Trump , at this late stage, may even have precursed his puppetmasters’ reaction if they fail to perceive him as a manageable genius.

He may even have a plan to trick the masters, in a last ditch effort to exclude any and everybody, that stands in his way.

The masters singularly can be exorcised the same way , by the process that works best for him : divide and conquer

Even now, the shark-tank is seething with turbulence, for the swamp blinds everything

Besides the puppet masters may consist of a wider. International group that is less consistent than supposed.

What if, the genius characterization stands , but the manageable part is converted to psychologically impaired.

The borderline may shift, away from the norm to such a significant difference, that would imunge into public sentiment

Books have been written on the subject, but he appears to be able to get out from under the constraints, that ex-prez Nixon could not wash in his dirty tricks attempt.

Here’s an angle that doesn’t come up very often:

nytimes.com/2020/09/28/opin … e=Homepage

[b]'In his new book “Rage,” Bob Woodward reports that Dan Coats, Donald Trump’s first director of national intelligence, was never able to shake his suspicions that Trump is in the pocket of President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

'Coats is obviously not alone — Trump’s obsequiousness toward the Russian strongman has been one of the enduring enigmas of his presidency. Even Trump’s natural affinity for autocrats doesn’t explain why Putin is one of the few men on earth whom the president of the United States treats as his better.

'The New York Times’s blockbuster exposé of Trump’s taxes does not directly solve this mystery. The journalists Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire make clear that Trump’s taxes reveal no previously unreported financial link to Russia; the documents mostly “lack the specificity” required to do so. But the revelation of the gargantuan debt closing in on Trump offers one plausible motive for why the president constantly sucks up to Putin, even when doing so seems politically self-defeating.

‘Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, has said that Trump thinks Putin is the richest man in the world. And the American president, The Times’s reporting suggests, may need a bailout.’[/b]

So, it’s not undisclosed economic ties to Russia or that infamous “piss tape”, but the simple need for big bucks to stave off his debt.

Now all we need is someone able to confirm that Putin and Trump have actually made this “deal”.

Then the part where the “Russian oligarchs” end and Putin begins. In other words, the manner in which “crony capitalism” unfolds behind the curtain in Russia as opposed to how it all unfolds here.

But how far will the New York Times go in exploring that? Is or is not it still part of the corporate media industrial complex itself? The Bilderberg Group mentality. Hell, even Jared Kushner is involved with them.

washingtonpost.com/national … story.html

[b]'NEW YORK — A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Manhattan’s district attorney can enforce his subpoena for President Trump’s tax returns, rejecting a bid by Trump’s lawyers to kill the request on grounds it’s a malicious political ploy and potentially setting up another high-stakes showdown at the Supreme Court.

‘Though the district attorney has agreed not to enforce his subpoena immediately while Trump seeks a stay from the Supreme Court, Wednesday’s ruling marks another blow for the president, who has fought for more than a year to shield his financial records from investigators, and follows separate, jarring revelations about the enormity of his debt.’[/b]

But this just raises the question of what the gap might be between the information the Manhattan’s district attorney might garner having access to them and all that was already revealed by the NYT.

Here the only mention of that is this:

‘Late last month, the New York Times published an explosive report on Trump’s tax returns, detailing massive write-offs that enabled him to pay no federal income taxes for many years — and just $750 for two years in a row. It also revealed he has hundreds of millions of dollars in debt with loans coming due soon.’

Of course the district attorney is more focused on possible criminal violations.

It’s the law, stupid.

More revelations about Trump’s taxes:

nytimes.com/interactive/202 … e=Homepage

[b]'Donald J. Trump needed money.

His “self-funded” presidential campaign was short on funds, and he was struggling to win over leery Republican donors. His golf courses and the hotel he would soon open in the Old Post Office in Washington were eating away at what cash he had left on hand, his tax records show.

And in early 2016, Deutsche Bank, the last big lender still doing business with him, unexpectedly turned down his request for a loan. The funds, Mr. Trump had told his bankers, would help shore up his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. Some bankers feared the money would instead be diverted to his campaign.

That January, Mr. Trump sold a lot of stock — $11.1 million worth. He sold another $11.8 million worth in February, and $7.5 million in March. In April, he sold $8.1 million more.

And the president’s long-hidden tax records, obtained by The New York Times, also reveal this: how he engineered a sudden financial windfall — more than $21 million in what experts describe as highly unusual one-off payments from the Las Vegas hotel he owns with his friend the casino mogul Phil Ruffin.'[/b]

And on and on…

[b]'Experts in tax and campaign-finance law consulted by The Times said that while more information was needed to assess the legitimacy of the payments, they could be legally problematic.

“Why all of a sudden does this company have more than $20 million in fees that haven’t been there before?” said Daniel Shaviro, a professor of taxation at the New York University School of Law. “And all of this money is going to a man who just happens to be running for president and might not have a lot of cash on hand?”

Unless the payments were for actual business expenses, he said, claiming a tax deduction for them would be illegal. If they were not legitimate and were also used to fund Mr. Trump’s presidential run, they could be considered illegal campaign contributions.'[/b]

Bottom line: What’s legal, what’s not, and what may or may not be?

For the Trump haters this is not about embarrassing him, but indicting him: “Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!”

Now that Trump is no longer president, “what’s in them?” can go in other directions. Down legal paths for example:

nytimes.com/2021/02/22/nyre … e=Homepage

[b]Terabytes of data. Dozens of prosecutors, investigators and forensic accountants sifting through millions of pages of financial documents. An outside consulting firm drilling down on the arcana of commercial real estate and tax strategies.

That is the monumental task that lies ahead in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business after a United States Supreme Court order on Monday cleared the way for prosecutors to obtain eight years worth of Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.

The brief, unsigned order was a resounding victory for the prosecutors and defeat for Mr. Trump, capping his bitter and protracted legal battle to block the release of the records — an effort that twice reached the Supreme Court — and delivering a jolt to the prosecutors’ efforts after the lawsuit stalled them for more than a year.

The investigation is one of two known criminal inquiries into Mr. Trump, the other coming from prosecutors in Georgia scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s effort to persuade local officials to undo the election results there. When Mr. Trump left office, he lost the protection against indictment that the presidency afforded him.[/b]

You know me though: cynical down to the bone. It’s not what all these folks are doing, but the extent to which what they finding out will ever lead to actual prosecutions.

Is there or is there not a “deep state” out there able to apply political pressure on those in legal system to not go in a direction that might actually put him in prison?

And what if it turns out to be something analogous to the Russian probe? In other words, findings that show Trump did shady things, but never quite shady enough. Sure, the Trump campaign was in cahoots Putin. Only a few idiots here will still deny that. But there was never any solid evidence that Trump was personally “in on it” with Putin. Who knows how many layers there are given his financial transactions.

The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., issued a terse statement, saying: “The work continues.”

Stay tuned…