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Is this why Trump didn’t want us to see his tax returns? I’ve always suspected it was one of the reasons-there are others. Indeed, in his testimony before House Oversight, Michael Cohen gave us another-he revealed that Trump likely isn’t under audit but that he-rightly-feared if his taxes were made public an audit would result.
Indeed, that’s what happened to Trump’s true inspiration Nixon.
That Trump is not a billionaire is something there’s long been cause to suspect. Just ask Tim O’Brien the man who saw Trump’s tax returns.
I Saw Trump’s Tax Returns. You Should, Too. There’s a lot to be learned from the documents the presumptive GOP nominee won’t disclose.”
O’Brien wrote this on May 12, 2016 after Trump had just clinched the GOP nomination, almost three years later we’ve yet to see them-and Richard Neal apparently is in no hurry.
He evidently is worried about upsetting ‘President Trump’ and ruining his hopes of bipartisanship(!) Wish we were kidding.
Democrats must obtain and release @realDonaldTrump's tax returns.
Join us and @StandUpAmerica in demanding they do by calling your member of Congress today:
855-969-4425
— Unrig Our Economy (@UnrigOurEconomy) March 19, 2019
STATEMENT: @StandUpAmerica and Tax March Host National Call-In Day Demanding Ways and Means Democrats Push Chairman Neal on Trump’s Tax Returns
JOIN OUR CALL IN DAY, demand @realDonaldTrump's tax returns.
855-969-4425 pic.twitter.com/3pzSld1D4M
— Unrig Our Economy (@UnrigOurEconomy) March 19, 2019
Mnuchin says ‘we will protect the President’-from public transparency, presumably. Mnuchin did point out that he has yet to receive the request for ‘the President’s’ tax returns and then asked if it would come ‘today’ at the hearing? If only. Neal is still building a public case.
Will he still be building it on election day 2020?
I notice a tactic of Trump’s GOP co-conspirator is to say ‘we should see the taxes of every politician’-ie, we shouldn’t be prioritizing seeing ‘President Trump’s taxes. But the precedent is that all Presidents show their taxes since Nixon. Why set a new precedent-everyone in the country show their taxes publicly-before enforcing current precedent-Presidential candidates have always shown their taxes going back to Nixon?
Trump sued O’Brien back in 2005 for writing a book that suggested Trump wasn’t a billionaire-that his net worth may only be $350 to $450 million dollars. This is similar to the latest where Devin Nunes is suing a cow over mean tweets and Trump hit into the same problem the criminal obstructer Nunes will have-discovery. Trump wasn’t able to prove he was a billionaire-which makes you strongly suspect he isn’t.
In his testimony Cohen testified that Trump misstated his net worth-making it more than it was on bank loan applications and less than it is for tax returns. This may well be another thing Trump fears in us seeing the returns-that he understated them to avoid paying taxes.
Maybe one day-hopefully before the election in November, 2020 we will get to see Trump’s tax returns and discover if he in fact did commit such tax fraud-a very costly felony that would land anyone not the ‘President’ in prison for many years.
But we now have confirmation in the NYTimes scoop on Trump and Deutsche Bank that Trump is not a billionaire.
Mr. Trump told Deutsche Bank his net worth was about $3 billion, but when bank employees reviewed his finances, they concluded he was worth about $788 million, according to documents produced during a lawsuit Mr. Trump brought against the former New York Times journalist Timothy O’Brien. And a senior investment-banking executive said in an interview that he and others cautioned that Mr. Trump should be avoided because he had worked with people in the construction industry connected to organized crime.”
So we can just say this as fact now-he’s not a billionaire. He essentially has the same amount of money his father gave him back in 1974.
Despite this, and despite Trump already doublecrossing them previously-as he would so again-they still gave him the loan.
Over nearly two decades, Deutsche Bank’s leaders repeatedly saw red flags surrounding Mr. Trump. There was a disastrous bond sale, a promised loan that relied on a banker’s forged signature, wild exaggerations of Mr. Trump’s wealth, even a claim of an act of God.
But Deutsche Bank had a ravenous appetite for risk and limited concern about its clients’ reputations. Time after time, with the support of two different chief executives, the bank handed money — a total of well over $2 billion — to a man whom nearly all other banks had deemed untouchable.”
After Trump ‘won’ the election Deutsche was flummoxed:
As President Trump delivered his inaugural address in 2017, a slight woman with feathered gray hair sat listening, bundled in a hooded white parka in a fenced-off V.I.P. section. Her name was Rosemary T. Vrablic. She was a managing director at Deutsche Bank and one of the reasons Mr. Trump had just taken the oath of office.
It was a moment of celebration — and a moment of worry for Ms. Vrablic’s employer.
Mr. Trump and Deutsche Bank were deeply entwined, their symbiotic bond born of necessity and ambition on both sides: a real estate mogul made toxic by polarizing rhetoric and a pattern of defaults, and a bank with intractable financial problems and a history of misconduct.
The relationship had paid off. Mr. Trump used loans from Deutsche Bank to finance skyscrapers and other high-end properties, and repeatedly cited his relationship with the bank to deflect political attacks on his business acumen. Deutsche Bank used Mr. Trump’s projects to build its investment-banking business, reaped fees from the assets he put in its custody and leveraged his celebrity to lure clients.
Then Mr. Trump won the 2016 election, and the German bank shifted into damage-control mode, bracing for an onslaught of public scrutiny, according to several people involved in the internal response.
In the weeks before Ms. Vrablic attended his swearing-in, the bank commissioned reports to figure out how it had gotten in so deep with Mr. Trump. It issued an unusual edict to its Wall Street employees: Do not publicly utter the word “Trump.”
It was sort of news to Deutsche Bank itself that it was in so deep with ‘President Trump.’ How did this happen?!
Trump would screw over one division in the bank he’d go to the next which was unaware of what he did in the previous division-classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.
And when Trump tried to get yet another loan for the Scotland golf course in the middle oft the 2016 election Deutsche finally did a Nancy Reagan and just said no.
In early 2016, Mr. Trump asked Ms. Vrablic for one final loan, for his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland.
Ms. Vrablic said yes, but a fight soon erupted.
Jacques Brand, who was in charge of Deutsche Bank’s American businesses, angrily objected, partly because of Mr. Trump’s divisive rhetoric.
Ms. Vrablic appealed the decision. Senior executives in Frankfurt, including Christian Sewing, who would become chief executive in 2018, were shocked that the private bank would consider lending Mr. Trump money during the campaign, bank officials said.
The bank’s reputational risk committee killed the transaction in March 2016.
That same month, as The Times was preparing an article about Mr. Trump’s excommunication from Wall Street, he cited his warm relationship with Deutsche Bank.
“They are totally happy with me,” he said to The Times. “Why don’t you call the head of Deutsche Bank? Her name is Rosemary Vrablic. She is the boss.”
Well the reputational risk committee wasn’t so happy with him.
But after the election the Deutsche was like-How did we get here?!
After Mr. Trump won the election, Deutsche Bank’s board of directors rushed to understand how the bank had become the biggest lender to the president-elect.
A report prepared by the board’s integrity committee concluded that executives in the private-banking division were so determined to win business from big-name clients that they had ignored Mr. Trump’s reputation for demagogy and defaults, according to a person who read the report.
The review also found that Deutsche Bank had produced a number of “exposure reports” that flagged the growing business with Mr. Trump, but that they had not been adequately reviewed by senior executives.
On Deutsche Bank’s trading floor, managers began warning employees not to use the word “Trump” in communications with people outside the bank. Salesmen who violated the edict were scolded by compliance officers who said the bank feared stoking public interest in its ties to the new president.
One reason: If Mr. Trump were to default on his loans, Deutsche Bank would have to choose between seizing his assets or cutting him a lucrative break — a situation the bank would rather resolve in private.
Two years after Mr. Trump was sworn in, Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. The chamber’s financial services and intelligence committees opened investigations into Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Mr. Trump. Those inquiries, as well as the New York attorney general’s investigation, come at a perilous time for Deutsche Bank, which is negotiating to merge with another large German lender.
Next month, Deutsche Bank is likely to start handing over extensive internal documents and communications about Mr. Trump to the congressional committees, according to people briefed on the process.
Ms. Vrablic, who is intensely private and rarely discusses her personal life with colleagues, declined to comment. People familiar with her thinking said she expected to be called to testify publicly on Capitol Hill.
Get your popcorn ready.
https://twitter.com/BioAnnie1/status/1108341026241085440
Though when-if-we ever see the tax returns time for a party.
https://twitter.com/BioAnnie1/status/1108343532979392512