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.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/umm-theres-a-whistleblower-about-the-presidents-tax-returns