Umm ... There's A Whistleblower About the President's Tax Returns
By Josh Marshall
September 5, 2019 12:49 pm
Did you know that a whistleblower has come forward with evidence that Trump administration officials are interfering with the mandatory audits federal law requires for all Presidents and Vice Presidents? I didn’t either! Or at least I didn’t until I was talking to TPM’s Josh Kovensky and he mentioned it to me in passing. And yes, this is really true! (Josh wrote the story up here back on August 27th. Definitely read his analysis for a deeper look at the details.) On July 29th a federal employee came forward to the House Ways and Means Committee with “credible allegations” of possible misconduct tied to the mandatory audits of the President’s and Vice President’s taxes.
Why isn’t this a bigger deal?
First, a few points. It’s not that no one has talked about this. There were a few small write-ups of this fact in D.C. publications after Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) raised the issue with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Neal wrote to Mnuchin about the whistleblower in a letter dated August 8th. But it didn’t become public until August 20th when it was included in a legal filing tied to the on-going tax returns litigation.
It’s fair to say that if there hasn’t been enough attention to this Neal is as much at fault as reporters. That August 8th letter only comes at the matter in a roundabout way. One of the arguments Neal’s committee is using in its demand for the President’s tax returns is that they need to see whether the law that mandates Presidential audits is being correctly administered. The IRS/Treasury response has been that there’s nothing to worry about on that front (the concerns are “unfounded”), so you don’t need the tax returns. In the August 8th letter, Neal says, well we do think we have reason to worry and in fact now we have this whistleblower who says there’s funny business going on right now.
As you can see, the whole issue is rolled up into Neal’s strategy for getting the President’s tax returns. Federal law says Neal can just ask for the returns and the IRS has to produce them. Period. The President has told his appointees not to follow that law. So now it’s in court. Neal’s strategy has been not so much to rely on the plain text of the law but to argue his legislative purpose for requesting them. Basically, I need them because we need to check on these laws or pass new laws.
But haven’t we kind of lost the plot here? There’s a whistleblower who says Trump’s appointees are interfering with the mandatory audit of the President’s tax returns. That’s a big deal quite apart from how it affects the tax returns lawsuit!
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/umm-theres-a-whistleblower-about-the-presidents-tax-returns
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How we got there is interesting, Danish Vikings named Ruthven, who enjoyed rape and pillage frolics in Scotland on a regular basis, until the Danish King raised his share of the booty they brought back, so they just went to Scotland and stayed.
If you look up Gowrie, you'll see mention of the Earl of Gowrie, a title created for members of the Ruthven clan.
We were notorious, when aroused not afraid to do a little kidnapping or assassination. This link tells a little, but there is LOTS more.
[link:https://www.scotweb.co.uk/info/ruthven/|
Our name eventually became "Ruffin" and here in America my great great Uncle Edmund Ruffin was given the "honor" of firing the first shot at Fort Sumter to start the Civil War. He also committed suicide after the war because he could not bear the thought of living under the rule of the "vile and perfidious Yankee race", as he wrote in his suicide note.
My mother was descended from French Huguenots, so everything in my DNA is all about rebellion! 
Oh and I'm a Son of the American Revolution too, so Donald Trump can just fuck right off, if anybody should be making decisions about who stays and who goes in this country it should be ME with 300 years of forefathers here! Not some Johan-Come-Lately German guy. 
My Family even knows the freaking boat they came over on the last trip to Scotland from Denmark on ( I can't remember now). My great great uncle is famous, his picture is in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary and book.
An interesting side not on my mother's side is that there were lots of redheads in the family, and the guys were very attracted to Cherokee women and married several, producing a sub-genre of red headed Cherokees in North Alabama 
Here's my Uncle Edmund Ruffin:
[link:http://randomthoughtsonhistory.blogspot.com/2009/06/personality-spotlight-edmund-ruffin.html|
