Free Republic

Republicans in the minority on the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee declared Friday that there had been “no legitimate legislative purpose” for the Democratic majority to release Donald Trump’s tax returns. It was the first time Congress had ever obtained and released the federal tax returns of a private individual. Democrats claimed that they needed the returns as they considered future tax legislation. But the former president argued in court — to no avail — that Democrats were overstepping the separation of powers.

WASHINGTON — Before Donald Trump became president and after, his exceedingly complex and voluminous tax returns came under regular scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. The number of agents assigned to the audit team: one. After Trump left office, the IRS said it was beefing up the audit team, to three. The tax agency itself acknowledged that it was still overwhelmed by the complexity of Trump’s finances and the resistance mounted by the former president and his sophisticated army of accountants and lawyers, which included a former IRS chief counsel and raised questions early last year about why even three...

The amount of income, deductions and taxes paid by or refunded to former President Donald Trump while serving in the White House was detailed in a new report released Tuesday night. The report reveals that Trump on his federal tax returns declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017. On their 2020 income tax returns, Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million, according to the report by the staff of the Joint...

Former President Donald Trump reported losses on his tax returns each year for a decade – including close to $1 billion in a two-year span alone, his onetime accountant testified at trial this week. Donald Bender, a partner at accounting firm Mazars USA, took the stand in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday as part of the criminal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization. From 2009 to 2018, Bender said he filed 76-year-old Trump’s taxes and “There are losses for all these years.” Bender – who was called as the first defense witness and was given immunity for testifying before a...

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) returned to the nation’s capital on Thursday and announced his plans to return to the Senate floor “soon” after recovering from a stroke. “Through the love and support from my family, medical team, and New Mexicans, I’m getting stronger each day in D.C. where I’m completing my recovery,” Lujan tweeted. “I’m thankful for the well wishes from folks across the country. I’m back at work and will return to the Senate floor soon.”

A Trump-appointed federal judge threw out a lawsuit from the 45th president late Tuesday that sought to prevent House lawmakers from obtaining his tax returns. US District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled that the House Ways and Means Committee has broad authority to obtain and potentially publish the former president’s tax returns — and described Trump’s claims as “wrong on the law.” “A long line of Supreme Court cases requires great deference to facially valid congressional inquires,” McFadden wrote in his ruling, according to the Associated Press. “Even the special solicitude accorded former presidents does not alter the outcome.” McFadden stayed...

Major tech companies Google and Uber have both postponed their office reopening dates indefinitely into 2022 due to the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 omicron variant. As The Washington Post reported, both companies have postponed their returns to the office, previously planned for Jan. 10, to indefinite times in 2022. These postponements come after the companies had already pushed back their returns multiple times throughout 2021. In a memo that was obtained by CNBC, Google's vice president of global security, Chris Rackow, told employees that the company will wait until next year to assess when they will be able to safely...

A person opened fire outside of a Bass Pro Shops store in Spanish Fort, Ala., Saturday afternoon. The Baldwin County Sherrif's Office said the suspect shot multiple times into the boat and ATV area outside of the store. No injuries were reported. "We are thankful that the shooting which occurred earlier today on an access road near our boat service center did not result in any injuries. We are also grateful to our team members for immediately implementing emergency procedures, and to local law enforcement," a Bass Pro Shops spokesperson told Fox News. Local news outlet WKRG reported a witness...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews stated that if President Trump’s tax returns had been publicly known, “He wouldn’t have won” the 2016 election. Matthews said, “He wouldn’t have won. That’s the catch-22. If the American people found out the guy’s prancing around with the airplanes and skyscrapers, and he owns everything in the world, golf courses all over the world, and he doesn’t pay any taxes, they’d say, that’s not fair. You can’t be our leader. I think even the people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan would say, at the margin, he’s not my guy. My...

A senior Palestinian Authority official condemned the results of Israel’s general election Tuesday, calling them a ‘vote against peace’. In a statement released Tuesday night, shortly after the polls closed in Israel, PA spokesman Saeb Erekat said the exit polls showed the vote had been in favor of the “status quo”. "Israelis have voted to preserve the status quo. They have said no to peace and yes to the occupation.” “They want us to live under a deeper apartheid system than that existed in the darkest hours of South African apartheid,” Erekat added. Earlier on Tuesday, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders sidestepped questions Thursday about when he will release his tax returns, with the Vermont independent hinting he could fulfill his six-week old pledge to make public 10 years of tax returns on April 15 -- Tax Day. Yet, as quickly as Sanders suggested that, he appeared to backtrack and wouldn't commit that he would release them then. "Do you know what April 15th is? It's Tax Day," Sanders told CNN on Capitol Hill when asked if there was an issue to releasing his taxes. "So, I think we want to make sure we have...

Rhami Zeini, a 16-year-old high school junior, discovered the purse Wednesday in the middle of the street on his walk home from school when he found $10,000 Zeini, who first checked the purse for identification, went to his parents and turned in the purse to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. “What a great example of doing the right thing even when no one is watching,” the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office tweeted late Friday night. Deputies were able to track down the owner of the purse and give her the money. The woman gave Zeini $100 as a reward....

Robert Mueller may be closing in on Donald Trump's undisclosed tax returns, George W. Bush's former ethics attorney Richard Painter says. In an interview with MSNBC's Brian Williams during a recent segment on The 11th Hour, Painter said that the president must be worried as an immunity deal was reported to be extended to the Trump Organization's chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. While the immunity deal doesn't necessarily mean direct trouble for Trump, it resulted in prosecutors investigating the president's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen getting information under oath from someone deeply involved in Trump's business. "Now we have the...

Amazon's flexible return policy may not be as risk free as you think. The company bans shoppers for violations, which include returning items too often, according to The Wall Street Journal. Some users aren't told what they did wrong. Amazon boasts free and easy returns for several of its items, which has pushed many brick-and-mortar stores to offer the same policies as they struggle to compete with the e-commerce giant. But it turns out Amazon's return policies may come at a price. Dozens of people have taken to Twitter and Facebook to complain about Amazon closing their accounts without warning...

The Tiangong-1 space station, which is hurtling towards Earth carrying a 'highly toxic chemical', will likely hit sometime between March 24 and April 19... Exactly where it will hit is slightly harder to predict, although experts agree it will be somewhere between latitudes of 43° north and 43° south. On September 14, 2016, China made an official statement predicting Tiangong-1 would reenter the atmosphere in the latter half of 2017. (???)

The two biggest names in Democratic politics – yes, that’s still Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – incrementally are making their return to the public eye, after an apparent waiting period as President Trump settled into the Oval Office job the former held and the latter sought.

Breaking on Drudge, from Rachel Madcow's twitter feed. She claims to have Trump's Tax Returns.

California’s largest public pension fund made a return of less than 1% in its most recent fiscal year, the fund’s worst performance since 2009. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System said Monday that its rate of return for the year ended June 30 was just 0.61%. What’s more, Ted Eliopoulos, the pension fund’s chief investment officer, said the poor year has pushed CalPERS’ long-term returns below expected levels. “We have some challenges to confront,” Eliopoulos said during a conference call. “We’re moving into a much more challenging, low-return environment.” CalPERS assumes that, in the long-term, it will earn investment returns...

The Obama administration must acknowledge the existence of an independent investigation into former White House senior economics adviser Austan Goolsbee’s alleged unauthorized access to the Koch brother’s tax returns, a court ruled Tuesday. A federal judge ruled the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) must disclose to watchdog group Cause of Action whether records of an investigation exist. Cause of Action filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit after TIGTA refused to confirm or deny the existence of the investigation in what is commonly known as a “Glomar response.” “The court has ruled that the federal government cannot...

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