The New York Times is refusing to release documents they say prove President Trump paid no personal federal income taxes for 10 of the past 15 years. The President and his attorneys have aggressively denied the allegation.
The Times reported Sunday that the President paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency and another $750 the first year he was in the White House. They go on to say the reason he paid no taxes at all for 10 of the past 15 years was because he lost more money than he made.
Alan Garten, an attorney for the Trump Organization, vehemently denied – both to The New York Times and publicly – the accusation the President paid little or no taxes over the past 15 years.
“The New York Times’ story is riddled with gross inaccuracies. Over the past decade the President has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government,” Garten said in a statement. “While we tried to explain this to The Times, they refused to listen and rejected our repeated request that they show us any of the documentation they purport to be relying on to substantiate their claims.”
The Times wrote that they had obtained “tax-return data” that covered the past 15 years that included information on “the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization.” They openly admit, however, that their data does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019.
The Times threatened “additional articles” in the coming weeks.
The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2020
The New York Times story comes on the heals of a US Supreme Court decision considered a victory for the President.
The High Court issued a consolidated ruling that declined cases to issue definitive rulings on whether congressional committees can gain access to the President’s financial records, tossing the issue back to lower courts.
In each of the House cases, a congressional committee had subpoenaed records from financial institutions, including the accounting firm Mazars USA, Deutsche Bank, and Capital One, all of which have financial records related to President Trump and his businesses, less his personal tax returns.
“Without limits on its subpoena powers, Congress could ‘exert an imperious control’ over the Executive Branch and aggrandize itself at the President’s expense, just as the Framers feared,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
