The former president’s tax returns from 2015 through 2020 include adequate proof of financial wrongdoing, according to a column by experienced investigative journalist and Donald Trump biographer David Cay Johnston for the Daily Beast.
He pointed out that there are deductions for Trump enterprises that may not have existed.
After studying the records that were made public on Friday morning following years of resistance by Trump, Johnston, the author of “The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family,” claimed that he discovered “strong evidence of criminal tax fraud.”
“Consider a wealthy business owner who makes up deductions, but even if those deductions were disallowed, the audited year’s tax liability would be zero. This indicates that the audit won’t result in any tax income. The author said, “Trump also generated a profit off a component of the tax system, generating $2.8 million profit off the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT. That’s also what Trump presumably did in 26 sole proprietors, or Schedule C, filings in the six years of public tax returns.”
Johnston recommended that investigators look more into how the former president used the 26 Trump entities to evade paying taxes throughout the relevant years.
He noted that the tax returns should interest New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, noting that they include 26 Trump businesses—or imaginary businesses—with zero revenue and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax deductions for expenses.
“That is fraud unless Trump can provide documentation proving the costs were legitimate and met other requirements to be deducted. He said, “The fact that Trump did it 26 times as a candidate and president is strong proof that he qualifies for prosecution by the federal government and New York State for criminal tax fraud “prosecution.
