Documents filed on Monday in a high-profile legal case centered on President Donald Trump’s taxes revealed that the investigation is likely searching for evidence of banking or insurance fraud performed by the former business mogul.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is seeking eight years of the president’s tax filings in order to discern whether funds were illegally used or obtained by Trump in the past. While the prosecutor’s office doesn’t state outright the specific allegations made against the president, they do make mention in a court filing made on Monday of “undisputed” news reporting in 2019 regarding Trump’s former business practices as a legal basis to subpoena his tax records.
Prior to today’s filings, it was believed Vance was looking specifically into hush-money payments, allegedly made from Trump to adult entertainers in exchange for their silence about his extramarital liaisons with them. But based on the assertions made in today’s court filing, it appears that the investigation is looking into other matters as well, including possibly whether Trump in the past has ever inflated claims of his net worth in order to secure huge loans from banks — something his former lawyer Michael Cohen asserted he had done during congressional testimony in February of last year.
Vance’s filing states it’s a “false premise” that his inquiry is focused on the hush-money payments issue alone. The document said that news reports of other questionable financial practices were also of concern, making it likely that Cohen’s allegations will also be examined.
The records that Vance’s office filed today seek to explain, in response to more challenges by Trump’s legal team, why the district attorney’s office should be allowed access to Trump’s financial information.
“These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors based in New York County, but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York’s borders,” Vance wrote in the filing seeking Trump’s taxes, further describing the president’s actions as “possible criminal activity.”
Last month, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Vance’s office, finding that the president could not keep his tax records hidden during an inquiry into his previous financial actions. The Court asserted in a 7-2 ruling that “no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.”
While The High Court did find that the chief executive held no such privilege, it did not rule that the president could not use other legal means to attempt to keep the records sealed away, unrelated to his office. Because of that possibility, the case was sent to lower courts where those challenges will likely be hashed out for the next several months, making it incredibly unlikely that Trump’s taxes would be viewable by the public before the presidential election, if they ever get publicly released at all.
During the 2016 presidential race, Trump had promised he would release his taxes for examination, as most modern presidential candidates have since the 1970s, upon completion of an audit. Yet he never fulfilled that promise, and later reneged on it completely, eventually claiming the American people had lost interest in them near the time of his inauguration.
Polling around the time he made that claim indicated he was wrong, that the vast majority of voters were still interested in knowing about his finances. Indeed, polling to this day demonstrates that the American people are still eager to know more about Trump’s finances, as evidenced by the response from more than two-thirds of the participants in a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll from last month.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.