John,
What is hiding in President Trump’s tax returns?
He has refused to release them for five years, and over two presidential campaigns. He is the first president elected in four decades to fail to release them to the public. He has groundlessly used an audit as an excuse, and taken the fight to keep them hidden all the way to the Supreme Court.
Because of this secrecy, we have only a limited window into Trump’s finances, in the form of required yearly public financial disclosures.
CREW recently received Trump’s 2019 disclosure, and if we learned one thing, it’s that his corruption hasn’t stopped:
Trump earned at least $446 million last year, at least $12 million more than in 2018, and some of the properties he promoted the most relentlessly were the ones that saw financial gains.
Trump made $12 million in sales of condos in buildings he owns or co-owns— and a significant portion of that came from anonymous LLCs, meaning that the president is earning millions of dollars from secret buyers. If that isn’t an opportunity for corruption, I don’t know what is.
Last year, CREW filed a complaint based on Trump’s failure to report Rudy Giuliani’s pro bono legal services as a gift, as legally required. This year, he noted the omission, but said that he and his lawyers didn’t believe it was reportable as a gift, and that Giuliani was unable to estimate its value. That’s incredibly troubling because it prevents public scrutiny of the scale of the free services Giuliani is providing to the president.
Those are just a few of the lowlights — for more, read CREW’s story and then share it on Facebook, Twitter, or by forwarding this email.
President Trump’s corruption is truly staggering, and the scary thing is that we don’t have anything close to the full picture, since he continues to hide his tax returns and financial records from the American people. We will continue to remind everyone of that fact, and continue to bring his corruption to light and press for accountability. Until Trump releases his tax returns, we will investigate based on the information that we have — and even the limited view we have is damning.
Thank you,
Noah Bookbinder
Executive Director, CREW
