Random thoughts on Donald
Trump. The Congressional Democrats, and the mainstream media:
Who
prior to 2017 could have imagined a scenario in which any politician,
much less the President of the United States, would feel compelled or
emboldened to declare on national that he was a “stable genius”?
Since
some time in 2015 or 2016 Donald Trump has claimed that he couldn’t
or wouldn’t release his federal income tax returns apparently for
any year because he was in an ongoing status of being “under
audit”. Never mind that there is apparently no law, no legal
justification for this claim. Nowhere does anything assert that being
under audit represents a valid justification for wrapping his data in
a cloke of secrecy. A few tepid justifications have been offered by
him and his lawyers and supporters claiming that the great unwashed
public would simply not be equipped to understand his returns without
jumping to erroneous conclusions. The questions raised by this
situation are many. Is EVERY year involved in an unresolved audit?
Has IRS not been able to wrap up any of the specific audits? If some
specific years have had their audits concluded and closed out, why
can’t the returns for those years and the audit findings be
revealed? How does the fact that each year an audit is opened relate
to prior years? Why doesn’t the media press the president on the
public’s right to know what public officials’ finances looks
like? How is concealing this in the best interests of the nation?
And
this week Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has bought into the
administration’s claim that Congress cannot compel release of this
information absent a clear “legislative purpose” to Congress’s
demand. I do predict this defense will eventually crumble before the
third equal branch of the federal government, the Judiciary. But this
three years+ of “running out the clock” is at a minimum
frustrating. And the claim by Trump and his supporters that the
entire question was rendered moot by the 2016 elections is insulting
and one that the media and the Congressional Democrats should not let
stand unchallenged.
