Someone needs to explain to me what the fuss is all about. As far as I can read this is a technical glitch in that he didn't report the sale/transfer in 2001. Everything else is fairly standard from where I sit. He bought the land for 400K with his own money. He sold the land to a corporation that was created for the purpose of holding the land and of which he owned a stake. That's basic stuff so far. Then the corporation sold the land for a nice profit and the owners received their share of the income. He paid the taxes throughout and now he will pay taxes on the gain. The hand shake deal is relative and involves his friends stake. The one who appears to have gotten the sweetheart deal is his buddy, not Reid. As far as I can see this is basic business 101. In no way is their tax fraud at this point or inappropriate business dealings. Unless something decidedly different from what I've heard so far this is overblown. I'm so tired of the MSM rail roading our guys for overblown charges and this is certainly a pleasant surprise to see it go the other way but don't get your hopes up. This is an ethics problem to be sure but I don't think it's a legal or a tax problem.
I think that if this is nothing to be concerned about, it is because people have not gotten to the bottom of it.
Were it not for a former aide disclosing this, the public would not know about it. If that is all right with you, then we should get rid of the Senate disclosure rules all together, since people who think like you do not apparently want to know of the secretive dealing of their Senators, including those who are keeping matters secret because they have relatives on local commissions who can act in the Senator's interest without anyone knowing about it.
The issue to me is the non-disclosure, and if it turned out to be legit, then why did he hide this? Why did his high-powered lawyer not follow the rules? They had to know that it would come out eventually...that is unless of course they did not want anyone to know that he would profit from the sale while the man's son was involved.
Ethics is more than accounting...its about trust.