President Donald Trump's business practices are likely to see the light of day after Deutsche Bank revealed on Tuesday that they had copies of key tax documents.
"And we've got some breaking news stemming from Donald Trump’s fight with House Democrats," MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace reported.
"It has to do with Donald Trump’s tax returns. Capital One and Deutsche Bank had until 4:00 p.m. Eastern today to respond to a court order on whether or not they were in possession of Donald Trump’s tax returns, and while Capital One says it doesn’t have any copies, Deutsche Bank responded differently," she explained. "They say they have, 'responsive returns for either Trump, members of his family or his companies,' but the names are right now redacted."
The children in question are Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.
For analysis, Wallace interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and tax expert David Cay Johnston.
"Take me through the significance of this breaking news first," Wallace asked.
"Well, Deutsche Bank has been unique in loaning money to Trump and often for reasons that are difficult to fathom, which in my mind has always raised the question of, were they making loans as a favor to someone else in the background, say a Russian oligarch or the Saudi royal family, and in this document they establish that they’ve got either drafts or filed tax returns for Trump or one of his three adult children or his company," he explained.
"Now if they have a draft, which seems almost certain, for House investigators to then compare that draft to the actual return Trump filed could prove to be very interesting, he noted.
"And David, there’s been so much consternation in the Democratic Party about this legal strategy, that Nancy Pelosi wanted to pursue Donald Trump in court to have all the facts, the strongest case before even contemplating formal impeachment proceedings. It seems like this would also be a big political victory if this decision resulted in the president’s tax returns becoming available to House investigators," Wallace noted.
"Well, yes, and there’s no reason, by the way, those tax returns haven’t been turned over, the 1924 anti-corruption law is very clear that the returns shall be provided," he noted.
"Nancy Pelosi has been very conservative about this because the country she wanted to be along with this, and you know, when the Nixon impeachment hearings began, the country was not at all with impeachment, but public hearings and disclosures from witnesses brought things out, just as we can have happen here combined with Donald’s crazy, making up stuff behavior, which is getting worse as I predicted," he added.
"I’m with you on all that. Let me just ask you sort of the dummy’s guide to Donald Trump’s tax returns," Wallace said. "What will they show? What will they confirm?"
"Well, they’re likely to raise questions. I think they’re more beginning point than endpoint about his sources of income, whether he has made more extensive use of illegal tax shelters and illegal tax practices than the New York Times and I and others have already reported on, and his extreme aversion to anybody knowing about his business practices," he replied. "I mean, keep in mind, Donald Trump is not a businessman in the traditional sense that you create a business to build wealth. I did that on a very small scale. He is someone who gets his hands on an enterprise, extracts all the cash that he can, and then leaves the carcass behind. That’s much more the operation of a mobster than of a business person."
"He also has a public fear about the size of things being revealed, in this case, the inaccurate and maybe smaller size of his wealth. Do you think that’s what’s driving his mania around his tax returns?" Wallace asked.
"The number one issue with Donald is the size of his fortune, let me be clear, as the person who revealed in 1990 that he said he was worth 3 billion to 5 billion, that he had a negative net worth," he replied.
"Donald Trump has never been a billionaire. There is not a single scintilla of verifiable evidence supporting that," Johnston explained. "He’s not poor by any means, but he is nowhere close to being a billionaire, and my column for D.C. Report that went up at Raw Story, because they publish a day ahead of us, is about how his statements in France show that Donald is a moocher, he’s not a multibillionaire, and why his own words about holding the meeting of the G-7 in December at the Doral show that."
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