President Trump is withholding his tax returns because he doesn’t want outside experts scrutinizing him and causing him to be audited or penalized, his former fixer Michael Cohen testified to Congress Wednesday.
Cohen was asked by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) about Trump’s claims — in defending his norm-busting refusal to publicly release the returns — that he is under an audit. An audit, in theory, would not prevent a taxpayer from releasing his or her returns, Khanna noted.
Cohen said he sought documentation of such an audit to help him to respond to press inquiries about the returns, but never received it.
The former Trump fixer was asked about Trump’s reasons for not turning over his tax returns.
Cohen said that Trump told him that “what he didn’t want is to have an entire group of think tanks that are tax experts run through his tac returns and start ripping it into pieces.” He said he feared such scrutiny would result in him being audited and ultimately facing taxable consequences or penalties, Cohen testified.
It sounds like Cohen’s confirming what Josh posted a long time ago about Trump. Trump’s entire operation would never survive even cursory scrutiny of experts and prosecutors. He’s only skated as long as he has because no one’s ever cared enough to dig into Trump’s “businesses.”
That’s a sort of roundabout way of saying he lied on his tax returns and he doesn’t want to be held accountable for it. I’m still holding out for the tax returns showing the world what a billionaire he isn’t, and how involved he is with Russia.
Why does the name “Alexander Butterfield” keep popping into my head? Or “John Dean?”
This was a really important interchange, and I want to give credit to AOC, who did a really, really solid follow up, nailing down a lot of things. I did not see everything, but of what I saw, she was one of the better questioners. Not what I was expecting given how some of her interviews have gone. Really solid work.
I dunno…I’ve had “Cucky McButtercup, the Meltiest Snowflake” noodling around in my dome all day for some reason…sort of visualizing it at the same time as on the cover of one of those “Little Mr./Miss” books…