'Bring a case': Trump's biographer says ex-president's taxes warrant a new criminal charge
Former president Donald J. Trump could face yet another criminal prosecution if his biographer has anything to say about it.
Trump biographer David Cay Johnston, who has covered Trump's taxes and financial matters for years, appeared on MSNBC's Alex Witt Reports Sunday. The host asked him about Trump's tax records.
"There's a lot of ifs on all of this. Going back to 2017 when you obtained some of his tax records from 2005. In 2022 you said his taxes were the best case yet for putting him in prison. Of course that has not happened. Could he be in legal jeopardy for that?" the host asked.
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"There's statutes of limitations for criminal prosecution of taxes, but one of the things we know from the Donald Trump returns we finally got, is he created 60 fictitious businesses, took tax deductions for a number of them that reduced his overall tax bill, even though they had no revenue, and in other cases the revenue and expense matched to the dollar, which I have never seen in 50 years of writing about taxes, and in 1984, Donald Trump did the same thing," he said. "He claimed over $600,000 of deductions for a business that had no revenue, no invoices, no records of existence, and was tried twice for income tax fraud, civil, not criminal. Both judges found against him, and his own tax lawyer Jack Mitnick testified against him for forgery saying he put his signature on it when he didn't prepare it."
Johnston continued:
"Since he has done this again, more than 60 times, I have argued either Alvin Bragg or the U.S. government should bring a case against him for tax fraud, proving he created fictitious businesses would be easy, and he was on notice not to do this, a clear indication of criminal intent."