Well, tonight, one of
former President
Donald Trump's most closely
held secrets is a mystery. No more.
The world is finally seen
what Democrats fought to obtain review
and ultimately reveal
six years worth of Trump's
personal tax returns.
The House
Ways and Means Committee,
which will be taken over by Republicans
next week, released
thousands of pages of documents today
covering six years from 20, 15 to 20, 20.
But all those numbers are merely raising
new questions.
Our Kristen Holmes is here
to help us
sort through all of this paperwork.
So, Kristen,
what are the biggest takeaways
from these tax returns?
Yeah,
so we knew some of this,
but we learned
so many more details through,
as you said,
these thousands of pages that cover
six years of its tax returns.
So let's start with his income tax
and what he paid while he was in office.
We have now learned that he had paid
two $750 only in 20, 17, 20, 18 and 19.
He paid a total of $1.1 million.
And in 20, 20 he paid $0 Now,
the way he was able to do
this was by claiming large losses
that he carried over.
But I talked to a number of tax
expert experts
who point directly to that $0
and they say that they believe
this could signify
actual business failures.
You have to remember that
some of this is strategic accounting.
It's something that they carry over
those losses intentionally.
In order to offset their income.
But that $0 is something
that might indicate actual problems
with his businesses.
The other big takeaway
that I saw
was tax experts raising questions
about claims
that Trump had on his businesses.
In one case in particular in 2017,
he said that his
aerospace company
which operates his helicopter
income, was $42,965.
That is a very specific number.
Well,
he claimed the exact same amount
in expenses,
meaning the net was zero
and there were no taxes on it.
So a lot of questions
there as to how that would work.
One expert telling me that
that was statistically impossible
to have those numbers line up like that.
Yeah, that was a very,
very specific number.
So one of the points of concern was
that the former president
might be receiving income
from foreign entities
during his time as president.
What do these returns tell us about that?
Well, this is absolutely something
that we were looking for
because Trump's business dealings
were a huge part of the narrative
around his presidency.
And what we found
was that he held foreign bank accounts
throughout his entire presidency.
And there's one in particular
that is raising a lot of eyebrows
if you look at this.
In 20, 15 he had bank accounts.
United Kingdom, Ireland, China.
2006 Kingdom. Ireland. China.
St Martin.
2017. United Kingdom.
Ireland. China.
There are a lot of questions
about why he was still holding
a bank account in China.
And I've talked to
several business analysts
who say they want to know
more about that.
What were his actual business
interests in China?
And is there any indication
that his policies
were impacted by the fact that he had
this business interest there?
We're talking about foreign governments
and foreign taxes
one other thing to point out,
we already talked about his income tax
in the U.S.
in 2017 he only paid $720
but that same year
he paid $1,000,000 in foreign taxes.
The reason why this is significant
is custom
for a businessman
who has entities across the globe
to pay this kind of money.
But what it sheds light on
is that as president
we now know that
while he was serving in the White House
where his actual business interests
lie in some of those countries,
India, China, Turkey, Mexico,
these are things that now
there's questions
about whether or not, again,
was his policy or was there any impact
on how he was acting
because he had these business interests
in these countries.
Yeah, those are very fair questions.
Kristen Holmes, thank you very much.
With us
now, Russ Buettner,
an investigative reporter
for The New York Times.
Russ,
you've been reporting
on the former president's
finances for years.
What do you make of these returns?
Did anything jump out at you
Well, I think on the returns
themselves,
what you see is sort of a continuation
of what we reported
earlier based on 20 years
of his tax returns
which is that the businesses
that he runs really don't make money
very often.
Often they lose money,
and he subsidizes that with money
from his inheritance
money from his entertainment work
on The Apprentice
and endorsement deals
that don't really require any
sort of business expertize,
but have been incredibly
lucrative to him.
There was a great example
in this latest trove
where during his one year
that he reported
a significant positive income
that was 2018 of about $24 million.
It looked like it had been a turn for him
because that was the first year
he had reported positive
income in more than a decade.
But actually what happened is he sold
assets that he
inherited from his father
for $26 million.
So that more than accounted
for all of that positive income.
And that's been a theme
throughout his life.
And then you see other things
in terms of
kind of working the tax laws to his favor
in ways
that are
somewhere between aggressive
and just outright audacious.
So, you know, does
it surprise
you, based on what we know
then, like you're pointing out,
I mean, these things that would
raise questions, maybe audacious
that the former president
tax returns
and not receive
a more comprehensive audit.
I think that's absolutely shocking.
I mean, if you think about this
for a regular worker,
your employer sends a W-2 to the IRS.
You report a number
that has to match
that W-2 on your reform, on your form.
Those numbers have to match up
exactly right.
Or you've got a real problem.
But what you see here
is that Donald Trump is reporting
hundreds of millions of dollars
in revenue,
more and expenses to report losses.
And no one is going in
to ask him to substantiate that.
In fact,
the IRS,
when this begins, has an open audit
for a refund
that he obtained of $72 million in 2009.
And they're still reviewing
that all these years later.
That's not resolved even to this date.
As far as we know, that's not resolved.
And they have one auditor assigned
to look at these 500 tax returns
that he files every year
until pressure increases
and they up that to three,
which is still wholly inadequate.
And they are still not
even thinking about reviewing
all of those businesses,
just his personal return.
And a couple of the business entities.
Is there anything in these returns
that you could see potentially
becoming a part of another investigation,
such as those currently
being run by special counsel
Jack Smith with the Justice Department?
It's a great question.
It's a frustration,
I think, of tax returns.
These are not his complete tax returns.
As I said, he files about 500 business
returns a year.
This is six business returns.
And his personal ones,
there are things that raise questions
in a tax return.
My experience
is that the four corners
of the tax return don't generally show
a red flag that sort of points
straight to an indictment.
But there are things that require
further examination.
There's a
a charitable donation that he claimed.
The tax return just shows
it was a charitable
donation of land for $21 million.
But the underlying story of that
is that it's land
he bought around an estate
in Westchester County.
He tried for more than a decade
to develop it.
He failed
it wasn't really worth very much,
but yet he got an appraisal to say
it was worth $21 million
filed that in order to low
is lower his taxes that year
and in future years
the IRS finally under pressure
started looking at that
and there it seems going to say
it was worth somewhere
between $8 million and zero.
So those are the sort of things
that could be looked at more.
There are a lot of expenses
that are quite suspicious
that should be looked at.
And his golf course in Bedminster, one
near the category of general
and administrative expenses,
increases five fold.
And it's just not explained.
Somebody should go in and look at that
and figure out
whether that's
a real number
or he's padding it with other things.
Yeah, there's a lot of questions
that remain.
Russ Buettner, thank you so much.