Donald Trump says he “can’t” release his tax returns because he’s being audited. But there’s not actually any legal restriction on doing so.
Trump has come under pressure recently to release his personal tax data after former GOP nominee Mitt Romney began suggesting that there might be a “bombshell” lurking in the information, and that Trump might have something to hide.
That’s pretty ironic, given that questions about Romney’s tax returns dogged him throughout the 2012 presidential election, especially after Harry Reid said he’d heard from an unnamed source that Romney didn’t pay any taxes at all. This, of course, turned out not to be true. What Romney is doing to Trump, in other words, looks a lot like what Reid did to Romney.
But Romney has forced Trump to respond. At last night’s GOP debate, Trump was asked about whether he’d release his returns. Trump said he wanted to release his returns, but that he was under audit.
After a follow-up from moderator Hugh Hewitt, Trump said: “I want to release my tax returns but I can’t release it while I’m under an audit. We’re under a routine audit. I’ve had it for years, I get audited. And obviously if I’m being audited, I’m not going to release a return.”
But as Politicoreports, nothing in the law prohibits him from releasing his returns. And not all of his taxes are being audited.
Stanford law professor Joseph Bankman said it’s not so odd for a man of Trump’s wealth to be subjected to repeated audits. “A lot of super wealthy individuals, and all large companies, are audited every year,” Bankman said Thursday night.
But he said Trump’s statement that he “can’t” publicly release his returns is a headscratcher.
“I’m not sure why that prevents him from releasing his returns. They are his to release,” Bankman said.
While tax returns are confidential by law and can’t be released by the IRS, there’s no legal restriction on Trump publicly releasing his own forms if he sees fit. Also, some of Trump’s past returns are not under audit. At this point, he hasn’t released those either.
It is possible, given Trump’s penchant for descriptive imprecision, that when Trump said, “I can’t release it while I’m under an audit” he meant something other than, “I am legally prohibited from doing so.”
But it’s unclear what that something else might be, and hard to imagine that anything else would really qualify as a restriction making him unable to release his returns. What it sounds like, then, is that when Trump says he can’t release his returns, what he really means is that he won’t.
In a Facebook status shared by more than 139,000 people, Texas mom Amanda Cropsey Florczykowski tells of a harrowing run-in with child sex traffickers at an unnamed store in Longview. Florczykowski is “convinced” that her two-year-old daughter was the target of a brazen ring of traffickers who literally pluck children out of their mothers’ arms in checkout lines. Luckily, with her wits and the Lord at her side, Florcyzkowski was able to thwart the nefarious gang, retrieve her child, and use the experience as a warning to others.
The entire paranoid fantasy really has to be read to be believed, so I’ll paste the whole thing below. But first, let’s jump ahead to the truth of this encounter: Snopes contacted Longview, Texas, police about the claim yesterday. “They told us that the department reviewed surveillance video and that the interaction in question lasted approximately ‘two seconds,'” Kim LaCapria writes.
Police were sympathetic to the mother’s fears, but said that the incident was inconsistent with genuine reports of labor or sex trafficking. The clip was passed on to state law enforcement for further review, but police in Longview did not indicate parents need worry about “stranger danger” in the area…
This isn’t the first time a “strange encounter” in a chain-store checkout line has spurred rumors of roving, calculating criminals intent on abducting women and children in public. Last spring, for instance, an Oklahoma woman was convinced that she’d been the target of intended abduction at her local Hobby Lobby craft store. And like with previous stranger-danger panics, people have projected onto the evildoers a specific intent relevant to the time: sex trafficking. LaCapria points out a few more examples:
in June [2015], Twitter users warned others of sex slavery rings targeting college kids during summer job interviews … then a harrowing tale of heroin-armed purported teenaged assailants working out of the bathroom of a Denton, Texas, Dillards department store circulated across the same channels; a Hickory, North Carolina woman claimed human trafficking rings were meancing the parking lots of Walmarts to locate new victims; and a Long Island Target was briefly cited as the locale of similar kidnappers in August 2015.
After a relatively active period over last spring and summer, LaCapria notes, sex-trafficking panics “went dormant” until now.
Interestingly, this corresponds to the time period during and directly after the passage of the federal Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which had lurid stories about human trafficking frequently making mainstream news, and an onslaught of January 2016 coverage and public-awareness efforts across the country for “Human Trafficking Awareness Month.”
But back to Florczykowski’s story. The Longview Police Department responded in a Facebook post that both dismissed her claims that “sex traffickers” like this were common and encouraged citizens to “report any suspicious activity immediately.”
“When our citizens are observant and they report suspicious activity they may be a key to deter or prevent future criminal offenses from occurring,” police continued. Of course, they may also waste everyone’s time with baseless suspicion rooted in the moral panic of the moment. Which brings us to Florczykowski’s original post:
My name is Amanda and I’m a Longview, Texas resident. I’m convinced that our two year old daughter was the victim of a potential sex-trafficking scam yesterday.
I got in the check-out line at a local store early afternoon. I took my daughter out of the cart and the couple ahead struck up the typical conversation about how “cute your daughter is” and then asked about her age, repeatedly. I initially was understanding of what I assumed was a cultural barrier, but I quickly became uncomfortable with the woman’s body language and close proximity to my cart/kids. I picked my daughter up only to have the woman ask if she could hold her. The woman was so close at this point that my toddler reached her arms around the woman before I could really respond. In an instant her proximity finally changed and she backed away. I grabbed back on to my daughter as the woman was saying, “Say bye to mommy” – what an unusual comment to provoke a child to say. The woman resisted returning her when I physically pulled my daughter from her arms.
Know their conversation began immediately with me and this all took place over only a few moments. After this couple left, I was really shaken up but still noticed the man a few feet away in my peripheral vision, continuing to stand, by himself, with no groceries, in a closed check-out lane. He faced the opposite direction, but was looking over his shoulder at me; glaring would be an understatement. His eyes did not leave my every move and I confidently matched his stare to show I was aware of his presence. I loudly conversed with the cashier about their security staff and the odd couple that seemed predatory.
I’m thankful to Jesus that He alone protected us! I was able to get out and home safely with my family.
I’ve since researched sex-trafficking and some details were precisely my experience. I want to recount those specifics to create awareness in hopes that you can protect your own children.
-Abductors often work in groups and position themselves throughout the store. Although it wouldn’t appear that these 3 individuals were shopping together, I am certain this man and couple were a team.
-This couple were of East Indian descent and the man was white and covered in tattoos – all were mid 30’s. Beware no matter the color, appearance, age or sex.
-The couple checked out with 2 items of little value. Something they could easily abandon.
-The woman had alarming proximity to me at times and twice put her hand on my basket. She created one route for me to place my groceries, thus leaving my attention divided between my kids and my task. (I did not place anything on the belt until they left…FYI
-I20 is a prominent sex-trafficking route; Longview included. In fact, the U.S. Department of Justice used the following cities to study sex-trafficking data. Notice the first three.
Dallas,TX
San Antonio, TX
Fort Worth, TX
Salt Lake City, UT
Buffalo, NY
Baton Rouge and New Orleans, LA
Independence, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Clearwater, FL
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (U.S. Territory)
-Houston is a popular port where these children are sold overseas
-Abductors often follow you to your car and snatch the willing child they bonded with moments before; all while you put in groceries.
-Abductors can follow you home.
-The cashier remarked that she thought I knew these strangers. Their body language conveyed that to onlookers, which would make an exit convenient.
-I’ve heard this is happening at Target, Walmart & Kmart; often in the mornings/before lunch. Completely true of my experience, but it could happen anywhere.
-Moms shopping alone with kids are targeted. Also true of my experience.
-Although rumor says blonde, fair girls/teen are targets, I’ve yet to find that in my research & my daughter doesn’t fit that description.
-Additionally, little girls AND boys of any age are targets.
The thought of what could have happened is sickening. I’m just like you; a mom and I hope my experience helps you to be, not fearful, but cautious!
2 Timothy 1:7 “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
Donald Trump is anti-free trade, pro-domestic surveillance, pro-torture, pro-campaign finance reform, anti-abortion, won’t change Social Security or Medicare, anti-Muslim, pro-border wall, anti-immigration, pro-deportation, pro-Internet shut down, pro-Putin, pro-eminent doman for private gain, incoherent on health care policy, anti-vaccination, pro-miltary build up, birther, and a smug silver spoon-fed bully. Basically, there is almost nothing libertarian about Trump’s views.
I am a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia which is one of the states that is holding its primary on March 1, a.k.a. Super Tuesday. Earlier this year, the GOP dropped its idiotic requirement that people sign a loyalty oath before voting in the Republican primary. I fully recognize that none of the other candidates have much libertarian cred either, so my goal is to vote for the lesser of four evils who is most likely to halt Trump’s march toward the Republican Party’s nomination.
Given those considerations, I am leaning toward Marco Rubio. What do you think?
In November, I intend to vote for the Libertarian Party candidate unless it’s John McAfee. In which case, I will stay home on Election Day and drink heavily. Or perhaps just throw away my vote on Chthulhu. After all, why vote for the lesser evil?
Lindsey Graham is still smarting from his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, which rarely rose above 1% in the polls, and now he’s in full DGAF mode when it comes to the remaining prospects in the field.
First, Graham spoke with reporters in the Capitol basement, where he repeatedly used a form of Donald Trump’s favorite slur on the Republican front-runner himself, calling the New York billionaire “generally a loser as a person and a candidate” who is “ill-suited for the job.”
Graham saved his most biting remarks for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, currently running a distant 2nd to Trump in most national polls:
“A good Republican would defend Ted Cruz,” the South Carolina Republican said, pausing for effect. “That ain’t me. If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
The line reportedly ellicited big laughs and even though Graham believes Trump will “lose badly” in the general election, he begrudgingly said he would support The Donald in the event he wins the nomination.
Graham compared supporting Trump to taking a ride on the Titanic after you saw the movie, but what are you gonna do, this is a two-party system.
Amid the collapse of PMIs, regional Fed surveys, and surging inventories, personal income and spending both surged 0.5% MoM in January – both better than expected. This is the best monthly gain since May 2015 as a drastically-revised data series notches the savings rate lower historically, but rose MoM.
And the savings rate rose modestly…
It seems Mester's comments this morning that a March hike is still on the table just got further support… time for another market crash to nsure that doesn't happen.
VIX mini ‘flash-crashed’ this morning to test its 200-day-moving-average to the lowest level since Dec 31st 2015. For now, it appears to have marked a low…
With the S&P retesting its stubborn support level of 1,812 as recently as a week ago, many have continued to predict that failures to breach said level would result in violent bear market rallies, most recently JPM which however “should be faded”, as it noted three weeks ago, looked at earnings and said that “16x and $120 create a firm ceiling at ~1950 and thus moves toward that level should be faded.”
Others such as BofA’s Michael Harnett, and overnight Citi, went so far as saying that unless the G-20 comes out with a big stimulative surprise, it would open the path for the market’s next leg lower, below this critical support.
Since then the market has indeed been gripped in the latest furious short squeeze, which as of right now has the S&P trading some 150 higher in under two weeks, at about 1962.
So has that change the big picture? Not for Bank of America.
In a note released overnight by BofA’s Chief Investment Strategist, Michael Hartnett, he looks at the surge into gold, which as previously noted was the biggest 3 week inflow since January 2009.”
He also points out the short-cover not only in stocks but in credit: “largest inflows to HY in 16 weeks & first EM debt inflows in 7 weeks; risk-on shift in fixed income corroborated by first outflows from treasuries in 8 weeks & largest IG outflows in 9 weeks.”
More importantly, he notes that in equities it remains a very different picture with $3.6 billion in outflows in the past week, and outflows in 11 of past 12 weeks…
… and summarizes not only what BofA is seeing but what the fund managers he interacts with on a daily basis say.
Here is the punchline:
Everyone (including ourselves) a “seller into strength” which means risk can squeeze higher short-term into policy events…G20 (2/26-27), ECB (3/10), BoJ (3/15) & FOMC (3/16); flows nonetheless not close to “full-capitulation” levels.
Sure enough, as we wrapped first thing this morning, risk – and oil – are most certainly squeezing into this weekend’s policy event, the Shanghai G-20 meeting, and ignoring the Q4 GDP report which was actually negative for Q1 2016, as the lower inventory liquidation means more inventory disappointments are set to unfold in 2016.
Which brings us to BofA’s punchline: “policy meetings increasingly seen as selling (not buying) catalyst, so selling pressure resumes if policy disappoints.“
In other words, all eyes, and ears, will be tuned to Shanghai on Sunday when the G-20 communique is expected to hit. If it indeed disappoints and focuses on broad generalities and hollow promises of Chinese reform, it will be interesting to observe if BofA (and “everyone”) will resume selling into strenth.
Amid hype hope that China will suddenly change course and unleash all new fiscal stimulus – because just what the nation needs is more ghost cities, ghost bridges to nowhere, and ghost infrastructure – has sparked panic-buying in crude and copper this morning…
As Bloomberg notes, industrial metals rallied as concerns about growth in top consumer China eased after the nation’s central bank head said that policy makers still have room to act to support markets.
The economy remains strong and its structure and quality are improving, People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said in a speech in Shanghai on Friday.
“China overnight has given the market a sense of ease,” RBC Capital Markets Ltd. said in an e-mailed note.
“LME is stronger this morning across the board on the back of China comments regarding further easing of monetary policy.”
So copper is fixed…
“The copper price outlook is no longer a simple bearish story,” Peter Hollands, the managing director of London-based Bloomsbury Minerals Economics Ltd., said by e-mail. “The macro drivers of price have switched from bearish to either neutral or feebly bullish.”
Earlier this week in The Washington Post, Harvard’s Danielle Allen goes full Godwin on Donald Trump and blends it with concern trolling that’s just off the charts.
In verbal contortions that would leave your basic India-Rubber Man constipated, she simultaneously invokes Hitler and undercuts the legitimacy of her own comparison. Later in the piece, after arguing that Trump is massively disliked by all of us, she then admits we are powerless to stop him.
It’s up to the Republicans, the one group that actually seems to dig the jackass billionaire. But anyhoo: “Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is accurate. That is not my point.”
Like any number of us raised in the late 20th century, I have spent my life perplexed about exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany. Watching Donald Trump’s rise, I now understand. Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is accurate. That is not my point. My point rather is about how a demagogic opportunist can exploit a divided country.
You know, it takes the typical Hogan’s Heroes episode longer to invoke Der Fuhrer.
Let’s be clear: the direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is not beside the point of the column. It is the point of the column.
There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but if you invoke Hitler, for god’s sake, own it. Otherwise, why bother? Why not talk about Silvio Berlusconi, say, whose late-20th-century rise to political power via a bullying media presence seems like it might inform discussions of whether a signature-steak salesman and serial bullshit artist is going to be nominated for president by the Republicans more than the experiences of an art-school failure who got big before the TV era?
Republicans, you cannot count on the Democrats to stop Trump. I believe that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, and I intend to vote for her, but it is also the case that she is a candidate with significant weaknesses, as your party knows quite well. The result of a head-to-head contest between Clinton and Trump would be unpredictable. Trump has to be blocked in your primary.
What? In the preceding paragraph, she had announced that “the vast majority of voting Americans think that Trump is unacceptable as a presidential candidate, but we are split by strong partisan ideologies and cannot coordinate a solution to stop him.” Soo…it’s up to you…Republicans? Leave aside questions of whether a majority of Americans are unfavorable toward Hillary Clinton (they are). Why shouldn’t Allen and her Democratic friends do something about it? Switch parties and vote against him in the primaries? Again, because the message is the opposite of the words on the page. The point isn’t to block Trump, it’s to be able to blame Republicans (just 26 percent of the population, according to Gallup) if and when The Donald beats Hillary Clinton. Again, if Clinton is such a weak candidate that Trump, whom we all hate, could beat her, what does that say about the Democrats’ contribution to the mess we’re in?
I believe Allen and even kinda-mostly agree with her when she writes:
Donald Trump has no respect for the basic rights that are the foundation of constitutional democracy, nor for the requirements of decency necessary to sustain democratic citizenship. Nor can any democracy survive without an expectation that the people require reasonable arguments that bring the truth to light, and Trump has nothing but contempt for our intelligence.
At the same time, Trump has not in any way, shape, or form shown actual contempt for basic rights or the democratic process in a way that sets him apart from other candidates, certainly not other conservative Republican candidates for president (Cruz and Rubio, for instance, are as hostile to illegal immigrants). Similarly, Hillary Clinton has actually voted for, signed off on, voiced support for,or implemented foreign policy and domestic surveillance that is either as bad or worse as anything Trump has barked about. In terms of actually affecting policy that helps or hurts a real human being, the closest Trump has come so far is giving Omarosa a clear pathway to teach at…Harvard, of all places.
I say this not to pull some sort of nihilisitic “they’re all the same” trip regarding the major-party candidates. Rather, I bring it up to underscore how idiotic much of our political discourse is, how cartoonish and self-evidently phony and overblown.
Part of Trump’s appeal is precisely his grandiose exaggerations—about Mexican rapists and drug mules who are taking our jobs while living off our welfare, how he’s gonna make America “great” again, etc. In this, again, Trump is hardly alone. Ben Carson, bless his heart, opened last night’s debate with a quaint story about the country being in an “abyss of destruction” or something and virtually every Ted Cruz sentence packs more spiritual warfare than an hour-long sermon by Jonathan Edwards. Hillary Clinton is herself known for extreme conceptualizations, sometimes even talking about vast “conspiracies” that are holding her back from her rightful ascension to the throne of Heaven (most people would simply call the forces arrayed against her standard politics). Bernie Sanders invokes billionaires the way priests in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man invoke the devil. Since before the Founding, American public figures have always talked in insane, millennialist, End-of-Days terms (there’s a whole school of the thought that the jeremiad is the fundamental American idiom). Remember the Daisy ad, anyone?
But the idea that the only right way to combat all that is through an equally unreal and bombastic rhetoric is not simply wrong but ineffective. Bringing up Hitler and then saying that’s not what you mean is a pretty bad ploy that only inflames the very people you ostensibly seek to persuade. Especially when the comparison is totally unsupportable, as it is here.
In a related way, I recommend Chris Lehmann’s recent piece at The Baffler, where he looks at how the media is constantly rediscovering the lack of civility always and only at the moment when the media is on the receiving end. A snippet:
The prim demand that our media class merits a sort of preferential exemption from displays of mass political passion on the basis of the status they possess doesn’t seem especially healthy for a democracy, either. For one thing, the whole notion that American political conflict is a decorous weighing of factual content against crudely deformed rhetoric—and the allied conviction that journalists are particularly skilled in this refined art—is a risible fiction. There’s a long and distinguished tradition of rabble-rousing, character assassination, and fabulizing in American electioneering, stretching at least back to the founding of our first party system, and finding lush expression in everything from the slander-ridden Jeffersonian-Federalist dustups of the early 1800s to the scandal-mongering of our own brave new media millennium.