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      Trump tax returns show China bank account as six years of records released

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      Trump tax returns show China bank account as six years of records releasedReturns date from 2015 to 2020 and span nearly 6,000 pages as former president rails against effort by ‘radical left Democrats’ Six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns were made public by a congressional committee on Friday, ending the former president’s long-running effort to break precedent and keep them secret.Trump says tax returns release will ‘lead to horrible things for so many people’ – liveRead moreThe documents, dating from 2015 to 2020, offer insights into the complex finances and foreign bank accounts of a man who was accused of abusing the presidency for personal profit and who has already announced another bid for the White House.A House of Representatives report released earlier this month analyzed the documents and showed Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income tax in 2020, the last full year he was in office.The couple paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, the year Trump began his campaign for president. They paid $750 in 2016 and 2017, nearly $1m in 2018, $133,445 in 2019 and $0 in 2020, the year Trump unsuccessfully sought re-election.Such numbers reflect heavy business losses and undermine Trump’s self-perpetuated narrative of commercial wealth and success – a crucial part of his brand during his successful 2016 campaign.Trump reported bank accounts in Britain, China and Ireland from 2015 to 2017, and from 2018 only reported a bank account in Britain.During a presidential debate in 2020, Trump said the Chinese account “was closed in 2015, I believe” and insisted: “I closed it before I even ran for president, let alone became president.”Responding to the release on Friday, Daniel Goldman, a congressman-elect from New York who was counsel to House Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment, said: “Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency. What business was Trump doing in China while he was president?”The returns also show Trump claimed foreign tax credits for taxes paid on business ventures around the world, including licensing arrangements for the use of his name on development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland.During his first three years in office, Trump apparently fulfilled his campaign promise to give his salary to charity. But in 2020, he reported $0 in charitable giving.The returns span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and Melania and more than 3,000 pages from Trump’s businesses. Sensitive information such as social security and bank account numbers have been redacted.Trump responded angrily to their release, saying in a statement: “The Democrats should have never done it, the supreme court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people. The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”Defending his business record, he added: “The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”The congressional report published last week also found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to conduct mandatory audits of Trump in his first two years in office. By contrast, there were audits of Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, according to the White House.Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the ways and means committee, said in a statement on Friday: “A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility.“We anticipated the IRS would expand the mandatory audit program to account for the complex nature of the former president’s financial situation yet found no evidence of that. This is a major failure of the IRS under the prior administration, and certainly not what we had hoped to find.”Trump’s finances have been shrouded in mystery since the 1980s and his days as a New York property developer. In 2016, he became the first major-party candidate for president in four decades to refuse to release his tax returns. He continued to do so in office.In 2019, the House ways and means committee, which has the authority to see any taxpayer’s federal returns, requested the documents from the treasury department. The Trump administration refused to provide them, setting off a three-year legal battle. In November, the supreme court ruled that the committee could access the returns.Last week, the committee decided in a party-line vote to make the returns public. Democrats argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake. Republicans said the release would set a dangerous precedent with regard to privacy protections.Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, presided over a pro forma House session on Friday as the returns were released, days before Democrats cede control to Republicans.Beyer said: “Despite promising to release his tax returns, Donald Trump refused to do so, and abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflicts of interest which no president since Nixon has foregone.“Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud. As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined.”Kevin Brady of Texas, the ranking Republican, condemned the move, saying: “This is a regrettable stain on the ways and means committee and Congress, and will make American politics even more divisive and disheartening. In the long run, Democrats will come to regret it.”Trump stalled efforts to put his taxes in the public domain. Running for president in 2016, he promised to release them once he had been audited. But later that year he appeared to take pride in not paying taxes.Kayleigh McEnany a ‘liar and opportunist’, says former Trump aide Read moreDuring a presidential debate, his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, said: “The only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.”Trump replied: “That makes me smart.”But in 2018 the New York Times reported leaked records that showed Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413m from his father’s property holdings, much of it coming from “tax dodges” in the 1990s.In 2020 the paper showed Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, and no income taxes at all in 10 of 15 years because he generally lost more than he made.Trump continues to face major scrutiny about his business practices. Earlier this month, a New York jury found the Trump Organization guilty of 17 counts of criminal tax fraud. Though Trump was not part of the trial, prosecutors said he was aware of the off-the-books practices at issue. Lawyers for the Trump Organization blamed Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer.The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is suing Trump for fraud related to inflating his net worth. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.TopicsDonald TrumpMelania TrumpUS taxationRepublicansUS politicsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attack

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      January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attackThe committee will demonstrate the ex-president was ‘derelict in his duty’ to protect the US Congress as supporters mobbed building The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsRead moreThe panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.The former president instead only reluctantly posted a tweet in the afternoon of January 6, hours after his top advisors at the White House and Republicans allies in Congress repeatedly implored him to intervene, the select committee will show.And the panel is expected to reinforce that Trump’s inaction directly contributed to the extended battle between the US Capitol police and rioters, who outnumbered them, since many rioters dispersed after he tweeted the now-infamous video asking them to leave the Capitol.The sources described what the select committee sees as potential legal culpability for the former president, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the prime time hearing.Among the witnesses for the eighth hearing – characterized by the panel’s members as a “season finale” with more hearings after the summer recess – include Trump’s former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Trump press aide Sarah Matthews.The two witnesses with inside knowledge of how the West Wing operated on January 6 are expected to narrate how that day unfolded, starting with how desperately Trump did not want to return to the White House after delivering his speech at the rally at the nearby Ellipse, where he had urged supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat.Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified in a previous hearing that Trump was so determined to go to the Capitol alongside his supporters that at one point, infuriated, he attempted to wrestle control of the steering wheel from the Secret Service in the presidential vehicle as they insisted he return to the White House.The Guardian has learned, according to a person directly familiar with the matter, that in a previously unreported incident, the fracas about going to the Capitol, after Trump told his supporters at the rally to go to Congress and “I’ll be there with you”, continued when he arrived back at the White House, and the argument spilled into the West Wing driveway.Pottinger and Matthews are expected to testify about what happened when Trump was back at the White House, including details on Trump in his dining room off the Oval Office, where he watched the Capitol attack erupt on TV, transfixed by the images as rioters overran police and rampaged through the halls of Congress, the sources said.The select committee will show through videotaped testimony from the Trump White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and other aides, that the former president ignored repeated entreaties from advisers to help stop the Capitol attack, the sources said.Hutchinson previously testified that she tried to get Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to lobby Trump – only for him to tell her that the former president “wanted to be left alone”.The select committee will also show that Trump never once called the national guard or other law enforcement, the sources said.With Trump unwilling to act, the panel is expected to describe how the duties of commander in chief were effectively assumed by then vice-president Mike Pence, who was sheltering in a loading-dock on the Senate-side of the Capitol after lawmakers had to flee the chamber amid the violence.“Trump gave no order to deploy the national guard that day, and made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets,” the panel’s vice-chair, Liz Cheney, previously said. “But Mike Pence did each of those things.”The Guardian has also learned, according to another person directly familiar with the matter, that then First Lady, Melania Trump, appeared to choose not to intervene with her husband or try and stop the Capitol attack herself.That day, the person said, Melania Trump was conducting a photoshoot for a new rug for the White House residence and when her then chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, asked if she wanted to tweet condemning the attack, Melania responded curtly: “No.”Meanwhile, Cipollone told top aides that Trump might have legal liability, the sources said. And the hearing may present more details of the calls that mounted after the insurrection for Pence to convene the Cabinet and remove Trump from office through the 25th Amendment.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpMelania TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Melania Trump’s auction of NFT, hat and painting fall short of $250,000 opening bid

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      Melania Trump’s auction of NFT, hat and painting fall short of $250,000 opening bidSteep dive in crypto market resulted in final bid of about $170,000 – $80,000 short of the starting bid threshold What do Melania Trump’s wide-brimmed white hat, a painting of her wearing the hat and an NFT of an animated version of the hat have in common?They were all put up for auction by the former first lady – and as of early Wednesday, failed to rake in the target price of a $250,000 opening bid.Trump announced earlier this month that she would auction off the autographed hat, which she wore to meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife during an official state visit in 2018. The auction also included a watercolor painting of herself wearing the hat and a non-fungible token, or NFT, of the painting.She insisted that all bids be made in Solana tokens, a cryptocurrency.When the auction concluded on Wednesday there were only five bids on the items, each around the minimum requirement of 1,800 Solana tokens.Although the minimum number of tokens was met, a steep dive in the crypto market over the last two weeks resulted in the final bid being approximately $170,000 – about $80,000 short of the opening bid threshold.“The auction winner will receive a personalized letter from Mrs. Trump, accompanying the hat and watercolor on paper and certifying authenticity. The NFT will be minted on the Solana Blockchain,” said a statement released earlier this month from the Office of Melania Trump.It said a “portion” of the proceeds derived from the auction would be given to provide people “who have been in the foster care community with access to computer science and technology education”.The auction collection, named “Head of State”, marks Trump’s second high-profile venture into NFTs and cryptocurrency. In December, she put up for sale an NFT titled Melania’s Vision: a watercolor painting of her eyes.TopicsMelania TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Restorationists urge Jill Biden to erase Melania Trump’s Rose Garden makeover

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      Efforts to erase the Trump family legacy have reached the White House potting sheds and nurseries with Jill Biden being urged to restore the mansion’s garden to a state that predates ex-First Lady Melania Trump’s 2019 makeover.An online petition calling on the first lady to return the Rose Garden to its “former glory” has been signed by more than 54,000 people. The petition says Biden’s predecessor “had the cherry trees, a gift from Japan, removed as well as the rest of the foliage and replaced with a boring tribute to herself”.Restorationists urge that the garden be returned to a state that was created in the early 1960s by Jacqueline Kennedy with the help of famed designer Bunny Mellon.“Jackie’s legacy was ripped away from Americans who remembered all that the Kennedys meant to us,” the petition reads, and notes that her husband, the president, had said that “the White House had no garden equal in quality or attractiveness to the gardens that he had seen and in which he had been entertained in Europe.”In July 2020, as her husband fought for re-election and the coronavirus pandemic raged, Trump announced that her renovation project, which included electrical upgrades for television appearances, a new walkway and new flowers and shrubs, would be an “act of expressing hope and optimism for the future”.The changes to the garden were the first since Michelle Obama initiated a project in 2009 to dig up an 1,100 square foot plot on the South Lawn adjacent to the tennis courts for a vegetable garden.The plan included replacing crab apple trees, introducing a new assortment of white “JFK” and pale pink “peace” roses, and a new drainage system. “In a way, the metaphor of openness and improved access became our overall plan concept,” wrote Perry Guillot, the landscape architect overseeing the project.But the renovation met with criticism focused on Trump’s decision to go ahead with her project during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is no indication, as yet, that Jill Biden plans to act on the petition’s recommendations.On Thursday, her husband was spotted by the White House press corps picking a dandelion for his wife from the White House lawn before they boarded a helicopter.A day later, on Friday, the first lady commemorated Arbor Day by planting a linden tree on the north lawn of the White House. Her press office said it was to replace one removed last month that was deemed a risk and had not been planted by a historical figure.“Who doesn’t plant trees in high heels?” she said. More

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      Melania Trump leaves Donald Trump alone in front of the cameras – video

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      The former first lady Melania Trump apparently spurned the conventions of her role by leaving Donald Trump alone in front of the cameras at Palm Beach airport after the couple left the White House for the final time ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Trump himself paused to wave at photographers, but his wife continued walking until she was firmly offscreen, leaving her husband alone and triggering speculation about the state of her marriage to the now former presidentMelania Trump’s photo snub prompts speculation over post-White House path Continue reading… More

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      'We will be back in some form': Trump vows return in final speech – video

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      Donald Trump said it had been his ‘greatest honour and privilege’ to have served as US president in a speech to supporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. ‘Goodbye, we love you, we’ll be back in some form,’ Trump said, before boarding Air Force One to the sound of the Village People’s ‘YMCA’. Trump is the first president in more than 150 years not to attend the inauguration ceremony of his successor.
      Donald Trump leaves White House for the last time as president
      Trump leaves White House a final time as president as Biden set to be sworn in More

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      Melania Trump says 'past four years have been unforgettable' in recorded farewell speech – video

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      The US first lady thanked Americans on Monday for the ‘greatest honour of my life’ in a recorded video she posted on Twitter.
      Melania Trump said: ‘The past four years have been unforgettable, as Donald and I conclude our time in the White House. I think of all of the people I have taken home in my heart and their incredible stories of love, patriotism and determination’
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