Home » Did the NY Times violate tax law?

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Did the <i>NY Times</i> violate tax law? — 15 Comments

  1. The NYT is peddling stolen information. I think a few reporters going to jail is warranted. Remember what happened to that notorious criminal Martha Stewart for a process crime? Now that was a great example of the FBI at its best. I slept so much better after they sent Martha to prison.

  2. I would prefer to see tax returns from a former President and First Lady who NEVER had a real job and now are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s just me.

  3. If the New York Times reporter conspired with the source to obtain the tax information for purposes of publication, wouldn’t that be a crime? This is what Julian Assange is being accused of, right?

  4. “..mantel of martyrdom…” Oh, those valiant protectors of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; seemingly lacking of any understanding of the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence want to be martyers on the keystones of individual freedom which they choose to ignore or are too stupid to comprehend, seek martyrdom? Oh, please spare me their elitist BS.

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  6. Agreed. Why is it a crime to knowingly buy and sell other types of stolen property? My or anybody’s tax returns are private property. Same is true for classified government info. If it’s hacked, that’s theft pure and simple. Anyone who buys or sells it is trafficking in stolen property. Jail ‘ em all.

  7. Rhetorical questions:

    What I don’t get is why all the clamoring for Trump’s Tax returns?

    Didn’t he file them with the IRS, an official government agency?

    Don’t they trust the IRS to make sure his filing is correct?

    If they think somehow or other his filing is wrong or that he cheated, then they are really making a case for the abolishment of the IRS.

    Quite frankly, I’d trust/respect the media more if they spent half as much trouble looking for Hillary’s “missing” emails as they have trying to get dirt on Trump.

  8. charles:

    See this:

    Democrats contend they do have a good policy reason for getting Trump’s returns, saying they have a responsibility to oversee the IRS and want to know how well the agency — which has a policy of auditing every president — is scrutinizing Trump’s returns.

    But Republicans scoff, calling that a pretext. They say the real reason Democrats want Trump’s returns is merely to search for things in his taxes that would embarrass him.

    Determining who is right — if Democrats’ demands are motivated by political animus or if lawmakers are just doing their jobs — will be a key issue as the battle moves into the legal system as expected.

    “It could turn on that,” said George Yin, a former head of the Joint Committee on Taxation who now teaches at the University of Virginia’s law school. “You have to have a reason that is consistent with Congress’ constitutional responsibilities.”

    If that’s the sum total of the Democrats’ reasons, it’s ludicrous. Not even remotely acceptable. Transparently targeted to gather information to harm Trump, because it will be leaked and even if everything he’s done is 100% legal, they figure it will embarrass him (just as the Times recently attempted to do) because there are a lot of perfectly legal write-offs.

    Their current activities fill me with disgust, and I think I would feel that way even if I still were a Democrat. I certainly didn’t approve of everything Democrats did when I was a Democrat.

  9. NYT should be indicted, tried, and found guilty of violating the law in illegally publishing private tax returns. Even if the “punishment” in USD is not enough to deter, and even if they try to claim they are martyrs.

    The Dems want to use the IRS and the FBI and all the gov’t powers against those who disagree. Even if the use of these powers is forbidden by the laws that authorize the agencies to have such power.

    The Dems are already corrupted by the power of too-big gov’t; and too many in the GOPe / RINOs are similarly corrupted.

    Too bad Barr has too few real, honest lawyers in the DOJ to do much swamp draining, which would mean indictments against the gov’t criminals.

  10. Tom Grey on May 12, 2019 at 3:37 pm at 3:37 pm said:
    NYT should be indicted, tried, and found guilty of violating the law in illegally publishing private tax returns. Even if the “punishment” in USD is not enough to deter, and even if they try to claim they are martyrs.

    Too bad Barr has too few real, honest lawyers in the DOJ to do much swamp draining, which would mean indictments against the gov’t criminals.
    * * *
    Agree on the indictment of NYT; 1st Amendment is not a shield to criminal conduct. The fine may not affect their wealth much, but it is part of the “broken windows” philosophy of deterring crime.
    Barr & Trump can’t drain the swamp because the drainage pipes are full of sewage and sludge.

  11. Good thing the Times was just illegally publishing private information.
    They might otherwise have suffered the fate of a San Francisco reporter refusing to give up a source revealing confidential information.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-reporter-declined-to-reveal-his-source-then-police-showed-up-at-his-front-door-with-guns/ar-AABev4M

    Bryan Carmody, a freelance reporter in San Francisco, awoke Friday to the sounds of someone trying to break into his house.

    About 10 officers from the San Francisco Police Department were bashing the front gate of his home in the Outer Richmond neighborhood with a sledgehammer, he said. It was just after 8 o’clock in the morning.

    Carmody called out and said he would let them into the house. The officers showed him a search warrant and proceeded to go through his home — from “top to bottom” he says — with their guns drawn.

    Two weeks before, police investigators showed up at his home to ask him, politely he says, to identify the source who provided him with a confidential police report about the February death of the city’s public defender, Jeff Adachi. Carmody, who said he worked with three local television news stations on the story, declined.

    He wasn’t about to give up his source on Friday either, despite the escalation — not to the police or two FBI agents in suits who questioned him about the case, he said.

    “I’m smart enough not to talk to federal agents, ever,” Carmody said. “I just kept saying ‘lawyer, lawyer, lawyer.’ ”

    So he stayed handcuffed for the next six hours, he says — a certificate of release from the police department that he distributed says he was in custody from 8:22 a.m. until 1:55 p.m. — as investigators searched his home, then his office, where they found the report in a safe. A search warrant filed in the case notes that it was issued as police investigated “stolen or embezzled property.”

    “There’s only two people on this planet who know who leaked this report — me and the guy who leaked it,” Carmody said.

    What’s wrong with this picture?

  12. Conservative Treehouse doesn’t think Trump should worry abou the leak, because tax arguments make people’s eyes glaze over. A couple of commenters there have additional ideas to mull over.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/05/08/nyt-trump-taxes-story-is-funniest-news-of-year-so-far/

    I can just picture the The New York Times gathering a team of actuaries, legal accountants, tax historians, advisers and financial consultants around a big executive office table, piled high with reams of papers and spent coffee cups, saying:

    “We’ve got him now…. as soon as people understand: fixed asset depreciation schedules; and if the assets were depreciated legally using straight line or diminishing balance; then we move to whole-value equity pick-up, or minority interest accounting; before digging into section 1031 ‘like-kind’ asset exchanges; partnerships (limited or writ large), carried interest loopholes, pass-throughs, net capital losses/gains, seven-year income averaging and the difference between long-term and short-term capital gains”…

    …or something.

    Seriously, the ‘Trump-taxes’ story has to be the biggest, funniest, most well documented, and most absurd, ongoing snipe hunt in history. “I was going to support President Trump’s re-election until I saw his depreciated amortization schedule from 1989?… said no-one, like, ever.

    jc says:
    May 8, 2019 at 6:09 pm
    Not only was it all legal, but there is an important assumption that is the foundation of it all that we should careful consider —

    1. Congress has argued for more than a century that they are soooooo wise that they can set all manner of tax provisions that will benefit the country.

    2. Every one of those tax provisions is effectively some sort of a bribe to get taxpayers to take a risk in some fashion that congress wants taxpayers to do — be it to invest in wind, solar, electric cars, etc., their own homes, or to have children, adopt children, or care for some elderly dependent, or to just increase their individual personal economic activity in some manner that creates jobs for others.

    3. Those same congress critters that presume they have this massive, detailed economic wisdom also pretend to be shocked, shocked I tell you, shocked that anyone actually reads the tax law and accepts THEIR bribes.

    4. Congress is shameless in screwing over the taxpayers who take their bribes and in doing so congress causes massive economic meltdowns such as the one Trump, and most of the rest of America, endured — all of which were a direct result of the combination of the 1981 and 1986 tax acts. This one screwup destroyed the entire S&L industry, which added trillions of dollars to our national debt in the early 1990’s. This is just one example — there are many others.

    5. If the tax law game of Russian Roulette doesn’t get you, Congress will be sure to add some new regulations — or just sit by and let overzealous and under-experienced bureaucrats do it for them. If anyone actually survives the crap Congress does or allows, then it is a guarantee that individual congress critters will rant and rave about how evil those people must be — why they are probably one of those 1% villains after all.

    6. Wash, rinse, repeat. And for some reason the voters never stop falling for it like they are kittens chasing a laser light.

    A couple of Treepers have suggested the first bolded idea, because the NYT’s could get the tax report legally IF the tax lawyer had his client’s permission to release it (not that he would tell them that).

    Hmmm… says:
    May 8, 2019 at 11:37 pm
    The most amusing thing about this story to me is that I believe the media was unable to gin up enough negative stories earlier this week for the President’s liking so he had to take it on himself to leak this one. At this point it I am almost certain the President’s media strategy is extremely focused on keeping the China negotiations off the front pages.

    In an alternate universe where President Trump was not a media expert then you can almost picture the headlines and narratives. The Big Club would love nothing more than to undermine these trade negotiations but it is not a sexy enough topic for them to get the coverage they need. If it were a slow news cycle this week then they could run headlines screaming about tariffs causing recessions or trade wars sparking real wars. They could then complete the narrative with serious sounding big club paid economists and think tank scholars droning on about how dangerous this is. This is what they would love to be doing right now. Instead we get the President’s taxes from 20+ years ago. It is hilarious.

    I really thought there was enough out there that something like this wouldn’t be necessary and I truly believe the Trump media team thought the same. The Monday headlines were just not cutting it though. China was still the top story. The tax returns did the trick. One less arrow in the quiver for the next time but with Russia almost done and dusted there is less to work with now.

    Anyway the news cycle for a week like this almost always ends with a huge pro-Trump Thursday or Friday story so good news is coming. I also get the distinct impression the President is setting up the NYTimes to start dropping some big bombs as well. As much as we might hate it the reality is that unless certain stories are carried by the NYTimes or WaPo they just don’t get the necessary reach and credibility. Hannity and John Solomon are just never gonna change the national narrative.

    There has been a subtle shift that occurred with the Azra Turk spy story. Previously these stories were always simultaneously released by both WaPo and the NYTimes but this one was not. It could be that it’s an FBI vs CIA thing but there is a possibility that this was not a soft landing story as is pretty much the accepted theory. I suspect that the NYTimes is starting to gently lead the story in a new direction and this had some good guy sourcing. WaPo is a lost cause but the President has been extremely consistent that the NYTimes is what he considers the “paper of record” so it has to be a priority for him to get them to print the truth about spygate. Since he is very good at getting what he wants I suspect that it will happen and I think we are going to see increasing signs of it. Leaking his tax returns to Maggie is setting up a big story this week.

    Sorry for the wall of text. TLDR summary: Pres gave Maggie some old tax returns and the NYTimes is probably gonna run a scorcher of a story on Misfud on Thursday. I predicted on Sunday it would be a cover story but I’m changing my tune a bit. I think they are going to expose Misfud entirely. If they do then it will be an absolute game changer.

  13. The answer to your presumably rhetorical question is sure, it did. But the law is for little people, and no impediment to the Times’ idea of truth and justice. Not where this or any Republican President is concerned, anyway.

  14. I still think he will released his tax returns shortly before the election next year to show a) taxes are too complicated and b) he paid $100 million in income tax.

  15. Mike: if Trump does release recent tax returns, they will also show that he has not recieved any salary as President IIRC.

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