Donald Trump’s tax returns, will we ever see them? According to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, the answer should be yes, because Trump is a crime guy who has (potentially) committed actual crimes, including fraud.
More, from the New York Times:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested on Monday that it has been investigating President Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than the prosecutors have acknowledged in the past.
The suggestion by the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., came in a new federal court filing arguing that Mr. Trump’s accountants should have to comply with a subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. Mr. Trump had asked a judge to declare the subpoena invalid.
Per the Manhattan DA’s court filing, their investigation is looking into “public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization,” and not merely Trump’s hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, which I would more accurately describe as compensation for the emotional distress they must have suffered after seeing his mushroom dick. The “extensive and protracted criminal conduct” includes, according to CNN, “discrepancies about the information the Trump Organization told tax authorities and lenders about its business” that were first reported by ProPublica, as well as allegations of criminal behavior made by Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen. I usually do not wish Cy Vance anything except for him to please eat shit, but in this case, I am making a rare exception—Cy, finish him.
In other Trump family crime news, the New York Times also reported that Deutsche Bank is investigating Rosemary Vrablic, “the longtime personal banker of President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner,” over a purchase she made in 2013 of an apartment that was owned by a company that Kushner had an ownership stake in.
The Trumps may not love much about the world or love each other, but they sure love crime!
In non-crime but also morally dubious news, it’s now apparent that the Trump campaign is counting on their own version of an October surprise—a covid-19 vaccine, just in time for the election! According to a report in the New York Times, Trump campaign advisers “privately call a pre-election vaccine ‘the holy grail.’”
The Times also reports that Jared Kushner, who cared so much about stopping the spread of covid-19 that he scrapped an idea to create a nationwide response to the pandemic because it seemed to be primarily hitting only Democratic-leaning states, is a “regular participant in meetings of a board formed to oversee the vaccine effort,” and that Kushner and others at those meetings “ask regularly about October, a date that hangs over the effort.”
According to actual experts, however, an October timeline is wildly optimistic, and the most realistic timeline is likely early 2021. And those actual experts, like Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, are worried that, as the Times put it, “the White House will push the Food and Drug Administration to overlook insufficient data and give at least limited emergency approval to a vaccine,” in order to boost Trump’s chances.
“There are a lot of people on the inside of this process who are very nervous about whether the administration is going to reach their hand into the Warp Speed bucket, pull out one or two or three vaccines, and say, ‘We’ve tested it on a few thousand people, it looks safe, and now we are going to roll it out,’” Offit told the Times. “They are really worried about that. And they should be.”
Why indeed!
- After noted Islamophobe Anthony Tata took himself out of the running for a job at the Department of Defense that required Senate confirmation, Donald Trump decided to find him a different job at the Department of Defense that does not require Senate confirmation. [Politico]
- Look at how excited they are to eat tasteless chicken and get covid-19!
- In related news, Tom Barrett, a Michigan Republican state senator who fought very vigorously against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, announced he has covid-19. [Detroit Free Press]
- Whenever a member of Congress says a meeting was “productive,” you know we’re fucked. [Politico]
- Please read Ed Yong’s piece on how the U.S. “squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus.” America! We’re #1! [The Atlantic]