Rachel Maddow Drops Trump’s Tax Bomb
Donald Trump’s 2005 Tax Returns Attained by David Cay Johnston.
Rachel Maddow single-handeldy obliterated the day’s news cycle with one tweet this evening. She claimed to have Donald Trump’s tax returns from 2005, positioning herself to release the most anticipated piece of broadcast journalism in years, only to deliver an unsurprisingly humdrum return.
The documents were attained by David Cay Johnston of The Daily Beast and dcreport.org.
The newly teased returns, if legitimate, would be nearly a decade newer than the returns released by The New York Times in October of last year. Those returns revealed a $916 million loss for Trump, which allowed him to evade federal income taxes for nearly two decades. A shocking point given the focus on income inequality in today’s America, but it was largely disregarded by the majority of his supporters — or worse, praised as a prime example of cutthroat, capitalistic success.
Trump has been experiencing increased scrutiny of his pre-presidency business dealings as of late as a result of an extraordinary piece of journalism produced by Adam Davidson of The New Yorker detailing the Trump organization’s dealings with corrupt oligarchs connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The tax leak may send Trump’s loyal acolytes on a search for a mole they may see as more dangerous than the source of the most recent WikiLeaks release, but the leak was only necessary because Trump has persisently refused to release his returns since the Republican primaries — a decision not made made by a presidential candidate or president since Gerald Ford in 1976.
The White House was quick to respond to Rachel Maddow’s announcement.
The documents appear to show that Trump paid $5.3 million in federal income taxes in 2005 along with an additional $32 million in the alternative minimum tax, which he has proposed to eliminate according to the Daily Beast.
If you were looking for signs of definite corruption, you will be sorely disappointed. But David Cay Johnston did say on Rachel Maddow Tuesday that if it weren’t for the alternative minimum tax, Trump would have paid taxes at a rate similar to a middle class married couple — an off-putting fact coming from a self-proclaimed billionare.
The tax returns are merely part of a single, decade-old return, leaving much to be desired. And based off the administration’s comment on the release, it seems unlikely we’ll get a more recent release from Trump himself.
