Posted on 05/01/2017 7:36:24 AM PDT by libh8er
The Internal Revenue Service is demanding a whopping $7 billion or more in back taxes from the world’s most profitable hedge fund, whose boss’s wealth and cyber savvy helped Donald Trump pole-vault into the White House.
Suddenly, the government’s seven-year pursuit of Renaissance Technologies LLC is blanketed in political intrigue, now that the hedge fund’s reclusive, anti-establishment co-chief executive, Robert Mercer, has morphed into a political force who might be owed a big presidential favor.
With Trump in the Oval Office, Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who has become his public voice, seem armed with political firepower every which way you look – and that’s even though presidential adviser Stephen Bannon, their former senior executive and political strategist, appears to have recently lost influence.
Since the IRS found in 2010 that a complicated banking method used by Renaissance and about 10 other hedge funds was a tax-avoidance scheme, Mercer has gotten increasingly active in politics. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, he doled out more than $22 million to outside conservative groups seeking to influence last year’s elections, while advocating the abolition of the IRS and much of the federal government.
The Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah Mercer, also has donated millions of dollars to conservative nonprofit groups that have called for the firing of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, an Obama administration holdover whose five-year term expires in November.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
Why didn’t Trump fire the Obama appointed IRS commissioner on day 1 ?
He’ll surely have less access than Sharpton had.
What will he get back? How about the recovery of America’s Free Constitutional Republic. That should do it shouldn’t it?
So Lerner went after a dozen likely conservative hedge funds, too? Somehow I doubt any of the funds were donating to the zeros or Clintons.
I have no problems with legal “tax avoidance” strategies.
Avoid away!
Koskinen is still on the job despite many calls for his removal by Tea Party groups and other conservatives. That is not a good sign.
Just more anti-President Trump bull shit!
Maybe to keep Koskinen to answer for these hedge funds’ possibly singled-out persecution?
NO “evidence” of conspiracies, of influence, or of criminal (or even coincidental!) interference.
MERELY the “possibility” of influence on the IRS by Trump because of the this long-term “investigation” of (conservative/republican-leaning investment firms) by the democrat IRS! Fake News!!
I’ve known the Mercers since 2007. They are great people and great Americans.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they lurk here. They probably do.
Say, McClatchy, how's that billion dollars of back taxes that Warren Buffett has owed for more than a decade coming along and did Buffett receive any favors from Barky's administration?
I don't know. Like, maybe did Barky block the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline so Buffett's rail line wouldn't lose revenue it generated from transporting oil from Canadia to The U.S.?
Get back to me on that, would ya?
“Just more anti-President Trump bull shit!”
Yup. Spinning like a top. Undoubtedly feeding the MSM their next “BIG” story about Trump. Sickening.
Anyone remember the laughable Beck/Cruz relationship during the campaign...Mercer is the reason why.
BTW, Mercer owed that tax money before backing the Cruz campaign.
ALSO, early on in the campaign Trump mentioned that the hedge fund people were NOT paying their fair share of taxes.
Idiots like you who demand the coronation route instead of primaries belong in Venezuela or Russia.
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