Trump taxes. Of course he cheats. We know that already.

Mar-A-Lago Portrait

The public has a right to know whether Trump is a tax cheat, and whether he is subject to undue influence by lenders, and blackmail by Russians and others.

We already know.

What is important is that hardly any Republican voter cares. And swing voters don't care very much.

Donald Trump's political persona is defined. He is that bad boy cheater bully. Republican voters like that he is politically incorrect, that he infuriates "woke" America, and that he fights dirty. He paid for the portrait that hangs in Mar-A-Lago as a tax deductible donation to charity. He is gorgeous, and he cheated to acquire it, a perfect combination.

If and when his taxes are revealed in full, we already know we will see flagrantly dishonest claims and underpayment of taxes, transactions with Russian oligarchs that seem questionable at best, and those will lead to more transactions that demonstrate he is subject to blackmail.

It won't hurt him politically.

We know what will happen next:

     Trump will attack Democrats saying this is simply dirty partisan politics. 

     
     He will say his deductions were absolutely legal and reasonable and that anyone who claims to the contrary is a partisan liar and too inexperienced to understand real estate.

     
     He will say that his dealings with Russians was absolutely correct and that no one has been harder on the Russians than he is.

     
     Trump will say that the real criminals are the Clintons, or Biden, or Obama.

     
     Fox News and every Republican officeholder will back him.

     Republican/Christian moral leaders (e.g. Franklin Graham) will defend Trump and say what is really important is appointing judges who will end abortion, and Trump comes through.

Flamboyant and bad

We already know who Trump is. In professional wrestling, he would be known as the heel, the character "portrayed behaving in an immoral manner by breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match." (Wikipedia.)

He is the bad guy who fights dirty for his team. That makes him their hero.

Nothing in Trump's taxes will win Pennsylvania for Democrats. What could lose Pennsylvania for Democrats is the idea Democrats only care about Trump's crimes, when what is truly important is the economy, stupid.

Meanwhile, serious people continue to update the public about the meaning of Trump and his taxes. John Shutkin, General Counsel to several major law and accounting firms over his forty year career, wrote yesterday morning about how odd it was that Trump's taxes had not leaked. 

Good timing. By mid-day we learned they had. 

Shutkin represents the point of view of the great mainstream of educated, law abiding professionals. In the world of attorneys and accountants, particularly ones in large firms in major cities with multi-national clients, close attention is paid to risk and mitigating potential catastrophic judgements. Billions of dollars are at stake, and consultancies that err--e.g. Arthur Anderson--could collapse along with their clients if misbehavior is overlooked or covered up. Shutkin's follow up comment has embedded in it the presumption that legality matters, that ethics matter, that not being subject to blackmail matters, and more generally that there are negative consequences for bad behavior. 

Not necessarily. 

Trump is not shamed by revelations of immorality. He doesn't play the political role of good guy, who cares about norms and rules and respecting the Constitution. He is the opposite, the rule-breaker. He began by playing dirty to pretend Obama was born in a foreign country. He was a naughty troll and got good media from it. It worked.

So now, if he will play dirty to cheat the IRS and launder money for Russians--as may be discovered--then he will play dirty to keep Muslims out of America, play dirty to get funding for a border wall, and play dirty to pack the courts to end abortion.

Shutkin's view is legal and honorable--but politically irrelevant for Trump. 

John Shutkin, attorney

John Shutkin: Follow up on Trump:  

"Some initial thoughts on the Times' big story on Trump's taxes:

This story relates to a period before the period for which Trump's tax returns are currently being sought by the various legal demands. But it is hardly coincidental.  The media has been trying to get its hands on Trump's tax data for years.  As to source, the Times only says that it did not itself "obtain the president's actual tax returns, it received the information contained in the returns from someone who had legal access to it."  That "someone" could be anyone employed by the various entities I listed yesterday: the IRS, Treasury, Mazars, Trump's tax lawyers' offices, Mueller staff, Congressional committee, staff, Melania (or Marla or Ivana, for that matter), etc.  

And then the Times staff, to its great credit, obviously researched the hell out of the data it received. 

At some point, Trump obviously ran through all his father's money.  That's probably when the Russians came in, as Don Jr. once bragged about.  Why Deutsche Bank kept lending Trump money when no other financial institution would do so remains a mystery: stupidity, venality, something else?  

What is clear is the point that has been made for some time: Trump has  been highly vulnerable to economic blackmail and/or other manipulation due to his precarious financial situation for many years.  And it is hard to imagine that anyone could be more concerned about maintaining his reputation and lifestyle as a financial genius, and less concerned about the legal, ethical or geo-political implications of being able to do so, than Trump.  Just "show me the money!"  

The one and only way in which Trump actually made money during this period was in classic "pump and dump" fashion: buying up stock in a company and making noise indicating he was interested in acquiring the company, having the company's stock price rise in response to his noise, and then backing away from the (non-existent) deal and immediately selling his stock at the inflated price.  This finally stopped working when the stock market realized what he was doing and that these were not bona fide acquisition attempts. What is a bit surprising is that Trump got away with this so long until all these allegedly smart guys on Wall Street figured it out and the prices went nowhere.  But the fact that it worked at all with a grifter like Trump is proof that, even (or especially) with these allegedly smart guys, Barnum was right. As was Bernie Madoff. 

As an aside, if any of Trump's noise ever made its way into SEC filings -- I assume his lawyers were careful to keep his purchases small enough so they didn't -- he would have been in big trouble with the SEC. "