DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump Paid $750 in Federal Taxes in 2016 and 2017

I think NYAG Letitia James is putting together a RICO case on the Trump's. So I think all of this will be coming out over the next few years in detail.

Side note - I don't know a single Democrat that indicated they would vote for Biden during the primaries and I talked to quite a few people. I knew supporters for Warren, Bernie, Mayor Pete, Tulsi Gabbard, Yang. So, I don't know how Biden got so many votes when he inspired nobody, but I have no faith that the DNC is not completely rigged.

Unless Trump released them, that's a felony. Or, just false. Probably both.

Correct. We know Trump didn't release them.
There for, it's 1 or the other. A felony. Or false.

Illegal on who's part, that's the question.

Thanks. So the Times can't/wouldn't be punished. The leaker, though?

Either way, a presidents personal tax information (which most presidents release voluntarily) clearly doesn’t meet the standard of “grave and irreperable harm to US interests”

It appears that the NYTimes obtained 20 years worth of President Trump's Tax Returns

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

Very Long, but will add it here momentarily.


**Added word "Federal" to title, to make it more accurate.

And?

Guess we'll find out. A lot, in the coming years.

The leaker almost certainly committed a crime. I don’t know enough about the law to say whether it is a misdeanor or felony — and that might depend on whether they are a government employee or not. It would almost certainly cause them to lose any law/accounting license that they have (probably most of the people with access to these documents have one or the other).

In New York Times Co. vs. The United States (the Pentagon Papers) — the Supreme Court ruled that the government can’t stop a News Organization from publishing documents that they have received, even if they received the documents illegally, and **even** if national security issues are at stake. That is obviously a much higher bar than the President’s personal tax returns.

EDIT: I went back and read about the NYTimes vs. US Case again — it’s more nuanced than I remembered. The court sidestepped the question of whether the US can prohibit a paper from publishing something that meets a previous standard of causing a ”grave and irreperable harm” to US interests.

Either way, a presidents personal tax information (which most presidents release voluntarily) clearly doesn’t meet the standard of “grave and irreperable harm to US interests”

What if the NYT had "hired' the leaker TO obtain the documents. Would that make them an accessory to a crime?

What if the NYT had "hired' the leaker TO obtain the documents. Would that make them an accessory to a crime?

Yes - I am almost sure they would be. There is no evidence that the Times did this — and Newspapers like the Times have an army of lawyers making sure they stay on the right side of these laws.

Where I think things **are** gray (and again, I am not a lawyer) — is situations where a news organization provides material support to the leaker. This is what the US has tried to charge Assange with — the US argues that he (as a hacker) assisted leakers in downloading sensitive documents without being detected. Assange argues that he/Wikileaks just received confidential documents, and thus is protected as a media member.

From my understanding (again, not an expert - and I think this is very gray in law) — the NYTimes can legally assist a leaker in giving documents that are in the leaker’s posession to them. That is - the Times can set up a secure webserver for a leaker to upload documents on, or could provide the leaker with an encrypted hard drive to transfer documents to.

I believe the Times cannot legally assist a leaker in getting the documents onto their personal computer. For example, if the documents were on a Trump Organization server (and the leaker had limited access to the server) they could not tell the client how to get full access - additionally, they could not tell the client how to delete log information or other identifiable information during that part of the process.

This is my best understanding of the law. Somebody who knows more should correct me.

They spend more chasing pennies from the poor when collecting just a few of those would more than offset any losses by focusing on the wealthy delinquents.

I was thinking more that the filings themselves are much more complicated when you have someone who has a lot of wealth that's diversified.

I think the point is that poor people don't have lawyers, so it is faster and cheaper to go after them.