Death and Taxes

The Taxman Cometh:  A number of Democratic presidential candidates including Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Jay Inslee have released years of their tax filings.  A few others insist that they will do so shortly as soon as they file their 2018 returns.  Not one to follow the herd, Bernie Sanders, continues to sit on his, when last asked he said that he was busy dotting his “I’s” and crossing his “T’s” but that he’d release them soon, whatever that means.  And then there’s Trump, despite that long ago, pre-nomination promise that he would release his if he were ever selected as the Republican nominee for president, his remain elusive but that refusal to share may be becoming untenable.  Yesterday, citing a little-known section of the IRS code, Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal, the relatively quiet and plodding Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to the IRS formally requesting the release of six years of Trump's personal returns as well as records from eight of the his business entities. His request is narrowly targeted and firmly rooted in a legal technicality and, as laid out in his letter, firmly within the “legitimate legislative, legal and oversight rights” of Congress.  Neal is right about that, as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee he is entitled to request a copy of  anyone’s tax filings.  Despite the request and the law, Secretary of the Treasury  Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS, is on record saying that he will protect Trump’s privacy because that’s what good supplicants do. Not surprisingly, Trump really wants Mnuchin to stand firm.  Yesterday he said that he was “not inclined” to allow Democrats access to his tax returns.  Using his old audit excuse, he went on to mutter that "We are under audit, despite what people said, and working that out — I'm always under audit, it seems, but I've been under audit for many years because the numbers are big, and I guess when you have a name, you're audited. But until such time as I'm not under audit, I would not be inclined to do it."  The fight for the Trump tax returns is about to get very ugly. The fight for the full release of the Mueller report is also picking up steam.  Yesterday over the objections of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, the same crowd of yokels who all voted for the full release of the report last month but who now have no interest in seeing any of it’s nitty gritty details, the House Judiciary Committee voted to authorize a subpoena for the report.  Chairman Nadler hasn’t acted yet, but is ready to send that subpoena if Attorney General Barr continues to sit on the full report that he appears to be busy redacting into very small unreadable segments.  As to that report, last night the New York Times reported that some of those very silent prosecutors who worked on the Mueller team have found their voices.  They say that Barr’s summary, the one that “fully exonerated“ Trump of collusion and also seemed to dispense with that whole obstruction thing, “failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for” Trump than Barr indicated.  The article goes on to report that the Mueller guys say that they provided a few summaries of the report for Barr to share with the public but that he rejected their suggestions in favor of the inadequate and misleading four pager that he released.  We’ve been through this whole something really bad for Trump is about to come out of Mueller land sometime soon thing before. Maybe this time the news is real, then again maybe not.  Once again, we’ll have to wait and see.

Lapsed Security:  Federal authorities are now investigating the security breach incident  at Mar a Lago for the possibility that it was a Chinese espionage effort and, despite his relatively dismissal attitude about the whole issue, the heads of National Intelligence say they’re “gravely” concerned about Trump’s safety at his Palm Beach White House.  The reality is that the Chinese woman with the malware and multiple electronic devices who claimed she was just hitting the Mar a Lago scene for a quick swim wasn’t much of an expert in spy craft and is only the tip of what is in all likelihood a much larger breach-berg.  Anyone willing to ante up membership dues could establish a spies nest at the club and it’s fair to assume that any government or multinational business interested in doing so already has.  As to White House Security or lack thereof, last night the Washington Post reported what most of us had already figured out, that despite his very public assertion that he received his security clearance the “regular” way, son in law Jared Kushner is the “person number one”  referred to by the petite White House whistle blower Tricia Newbold.  Kushner got his top security clearance approved over the objections of professional staff who expressed concerns about foreign influence over him, his private business interests and his personal conduct. First daughter Ivanka received her clearance on the very same day that Jared received his through that nepotistic override that she also denied during her televised Abby Huntsman interview.

2020:  Beto O’Rourke hauled in $9.4 million in campaign contributions during the first quarter, far less than Bernie’s $18 million but still quite impressive given that he was only on the campaign for eighteen days.  One still unannounced candidate, former VP Joe Biden, released a video statement acknowledging that it’s time for him to rein in his touchy feely ways, errant hands and  to stop with the misplaced kisses.  He didn’t come out and apologize for any of those head and Eskimo kisses but he did say that he understands that times have changed and that he needs to change with them. His first accuser, Lucy Flores, the former Nevada state Assemblywoman and one time Lieutenant Governor candidate, isn’t satisfied because she wants a “real apology” and maybe, just maybe some more minutes in the spotlight. A few more women have come forward to identify themselves as Biden “victims” while many others saying, enough already let’s move on.  Its not clear what this means for Joe Biden who may or may not be the right candidate to go up against Donald Trump in 2020, but it’s a story and so far it has staying power and continues to get more press than some other nefarious things, in particular the fact that Senate Majority Leader, who continues to hold up votes on any legislation coming out of the House got all of his fellow Republicans except for Senators Susan Collins and Mike Lee to vote to slash debate time for sub-Cabinet level executive branch nominees and district court judges.  McConnell, the king of obstruction who managed to block far too many of Obama’s judicial appointments, who single handedly kept moderate judge Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court and stalled the confirmation of an Obama ambassador pick for so long that she actually died while waiting, justified the change in procedure by attacking Democrats for stalling confirmations. Big sigh.