The Connection Between Trump’s Taxes and the January 6 Report

By David Corn  December 23, 2022

Donald Trump appearing at Mar-a-Lago on Election Day, 2022. Andrew Harnik/AP

Donald Trump’s tax returns. The January 6 committee final report. It’s Christmastime in Washington. Literally and figuratively.

As the year comes to an end, we’ve been presented with the bookends of Trump’s corrupt reign. I doubt this will change much. He’s still the leading (and only) official Republican 2024 contender so far. Though he looks more foolish and grift-ish than ever—buy my NFT trading cards!—Trump remains a threat to American democracy, with millions of citizens still enthralled with his con and his conspiracy theories, especially with Elon Musk and others bolstering the paranoia and grievances of Red-Pilled America. But these two historic events—the release of Trump’s tax information and the release of the 1/6 report—provide undeniable evidence of his perfidy and offer cause for reflection.

Trump’s refusal to follow tradition and release his tax returns was both a symbolic act of imperiousness and a sign of crookedness. Some of you might recall that, for years, I tweeted this message practically on a daily basis: “Today would be a good day for Donald Trump to release his tax returns.” He had promised to do so before entering the presidential contest in 2015. Then he stubbornly resisted, using the phony excuse that he couldn’t because his tax returns were being audited.

This break with common practice was—or should have been—disturbing. It was a tell. It signaled that Trump could not be trusted to abide by the normal rules of politics and governance. This showed he viewed himself above it all. His broken vow was evidence he was a bullshitter, for there was no reason why tax returns being audited could not be released. Yet he kept pitching this bogus argument even after he won the White House.

As we’ve learned this week, during his first two years in office, his returns were not being audited, though they should have been under IRS policy that calls for vetting the returns of the sitting president. For some reason, the IRS let him off the hook—until the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2019 and started asking questions about Trump’s returns and whether they had been audited. This is quite a suspicious series of events and obviously ripe for investigation by Senate Democrats in the new Congress. (Don’t expect House Republicans to probe why the IRS, while governed by a Trump appointee, took a lackadaisical approach to Trump’s taxes.) The bottom line: Trump lied about the reason he would not share his returns with the public.

There’s no mystery to his motivation. As the New York Times reported in 2020, after gaining access to Trump’s tax information, Trump had deployed highly unusual tactics to avoid paying taxes, including declaring tens of millions of dollars in expenses—maybe much more—that might not have been legitimate. The report issued this week by the House Ways and Means Committee, prior to the release of Trump’s actual returns, highlighted numerous deductions and declarations—including unsubstantiated charitable donations and loans to Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr.—that were mighty questionable. This information suggests that Trump is a cheat—as did the recent conviction of the Trump Organization for tax fraud. Had his returns been publicly disclosed during the 2016 campaign, he would have faced tremendous criticism. Enough to kill his presidential bid? Who knows? But it’s clear Trump made the right choice (for himself) in violating his promise to disclose this information.

The controversy over Trump’s tax returns and the actual returns themselves were signs of his shiftiness and his unwillingness to respect norms and rules—or any principle other than brazen self-interest. Those of us who obsessed over his defiance on this point were correct to do so. This one chapter revealed so much about Trump. Which brings us to January 6.

Certainly, much transpired between Trump’s broken promise in 2016 and the insurrectionist riot he incited. But the assault on the Capitol, which followed Trump’s promotion of the Big Lie and his various (arguably illegal) efforts to overturn the 2020 election, was fueled by the same spirit: Trump’s belief that he was not hindered by the law or anything else, including the Constitution. As I noted, the January 6 committee’s final report proved what had already been proved: Trump tried to destroy American democracy in order to retain power. He did this for weeks after the 2020 election through a variety of schemes that culminated in the riot, during which he took no action to quell the violence because the seditious assault benefitted him and his effort to thwart Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory. 

The report offers hundreds of pages of disturbing details that outline a multipronged subversive conspiracy that extended from Trump to GOP members of Congress to irresponsible lawyers and supposed constitutional scholars (Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman) to assorted QAnonish crazies to far-right paramilitarists, neo-Nazis, and other thugs. The specifics warrant attention, and Trump and all his co-conspirators deserve to be held accountable. Yet the big picture was already well known: a sitting president attempted to end the republic. The well-researched, well-written report will not persuade Trump cultists that they reside within a world of disinformation, demagoguery, and antidemocratic extremism. But it will stand as a rock-solid account of a nefarious campaign to undo the nation. Whether Trump is prosecuted by the Justice Department for his narcissistic wickedness or not, the report establishes a historical record that is a devastating indictment of the 45th president.

As the current Congress comes to an end—and MAGAish Republicans who remain devoted to Trump’s politics of grievance and hatred, election denialism, January 6 lowballing, and conspiracism prepare to take control of half of the legislative branch—the release of Trump’s tax returns and the January 6 report are fitting parting shots. Trump came into power as a scoundrel and a liar; he departed, after a failed coup, the same way. The release of his taxes and the finale of the January 6 investigation both document and remind us of the profound dishonesty and danger the nation has lived through in recent years and of the threat that has not passed. See you next year.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

A Holiday Work Stoppage

The Our Land elves are damn tired—too much news these past few weeks!—and they deserve a break. We will return after we ring in the new year and clean up our workshop. Many thanks for sharing 2022 with us. Enjoy its final days and get ready for 2023. I’m forecasting a bumpy ride.

The Weirdest Congressional Scandal in a Long Time

Have you been following the controversy over George Santos, the incoming House Republican from New York? The New York Times caught him apparently fibbing about…well, everything: his work for investment firms, his education, his personal finances, and more. And The Forward revealed that he apparently lied when he claimed that he was of Jewish descent and that his grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Europe during World War II. Of course, there’s more. Santos cannot fully explain his claim to have made between $3.5 million and $11.5 million in 2021 and 2022. In 2020, he earned $55,000 working for a firm that holds conferences for investors. Yet then he scored millions via a company he founded in 2021 that didn’t even exist for a year. Santos has offered only vague and contradicting explanations of the work this company supposedly did. There are no public signs of its operations. Not even a website. My colleague Noah Lanard and I investigated Santos and this company and added new details to the already bizarre and shady tale of this incoming Republican congressman. Santos’ business dealings don’t pass the smell test and warrant more investigation—perhaps from the authorities. You can read our story here.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

There were a lot of top-notch contenders this week. In response to the release of introductory material for the January 6 committee’s final report, GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement, “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations.” In a weaselly fashion, he couldn’t even go so far as to name Trump directly. And McConnell remains on the record saying he will support Trump in 2024 if he is the Republican presidential nominee. A true profile in courage here.

Donald Trump Jr. showed that his jerkiness knows no bounds. On the day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Washington to meet President Joe Biden and address Congress, Junior tweeted, “Zelensky is basically an ungrateful international welfare queen.” A nepo-baby who has never achieved anything on his own had the gall to mock a man bravely leading a nation endangered by a genocidal war mounted by Vladimir Putin—and to use a right-wing racist trope to do so. I suppose that makes sense. Putin helped elect Trump in 2016 (when Trump Jr. secretly met with a Kremlin emissary sent to New York to aid the Trump campaign). And Zelenskyy was involved in the first impeachment of Trump, who had tried to blackmail the Ukrainian leader to obtain dirt on Joe Biden and information to absolve Putin of the attack on the 2016 election. Smearing Putin’s number-one foe is on brand for a Trump. Still, this could be the dumbest remark from Trump’s boy, and that would be some accomplishment.

This week’s winner, though, is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). On Fox, he explained to Tucker Carlson that the danger with “liberal culture” is that it promotes the “message” to young people that “the most you can aspire to in life is to be a consumer who sits in a cubicle in front of a computer all day and doesn’t ask any questions and doesn’t do anything meaningful with your life.” He continued:

And what we need to say to young men—and young women, too—is just the opposite: Aspire to be something more than a consumer. And for young men, aspire to be something more than a consumer [of] pornography. Aspire to actually create something in your life. Like create a family, for instance. That is the single greatest act of rebellion, if you like, against the liberal culture that is suppressing people’s desire, that is suppressing their potential—is to go out and actually engage in real relationships, get married, have a family, have kids, have your own ideas, and be a responsible member of society. I mean, this is what people are built to do. And again, this is what young people want to do. They want to be challenged in this way.

As a card-carrying member of “liberal culture,” I have to ask, what the hell is Hawley talking about? None of this comes up during our secret meetings. Hey Jane, how many Generation Zers have you chained to desks and snuffed out all their ambitions this week? Where do you find liberals encouraging young men to be incels and porn consumers? How are liberals thwarting young people from starting families? It seems climate change, economic challenges, and other big issues are more responsible for that. And how are liberals forcing young people into cubicles and gaming? It’s giving Hawley far too much credit to offer a rational response to this nonsense. He’s merely trying to find a new way to slam libs as anti-family. But good luck, Senator, telling young voters that you think they’re porn-loving do-nothings. Now that’s dumb.

As for Dumbass Comment of the Year, there was no contest: Donald Trump earlier this month calling for the “termination” of provisions of the US Constitution so he could be reinstated as president. Here was a former president who swore an oath to protect the Constitution and now seeks a return to the position urging the decimation of America’s founding document. It doesn’t get much crazier than this. But it will. Trump’s 2024 campaign has barely begun. If this is the starting point, imagine where he will end up. Trump’s lack of respect for the Constitution was hardly surprising. Perhaps more disturbing was that much of the mainstream media treated this comment as yet another one of those can-you-believe-it Trump moments and covered it as just a political football, nothing more ominous. I kvetched about that here. 

The Mailbag

There was much good cheer in the mail for the “Cracked Christmas” song list I provided in the last issue. (There’s a corresponding Spotify playlist.) Harold Fritts wrote:

I thought I was the only person who thinks Christmas has lost all meaning and has just become an excuse to buy crap on Black Friday. Your collection of music is perfect, and I will put together a playlist to share with daughters and granddaughters. I’m sure they will not appreciate my cynicism, but I can blame it all on Mother Jones. The saddest part of this playlist is that John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” never seems to be out of date.

Several readers suggested songs to add to the list. Here are the ones that caught my eye, or ear:

Prince’s “Another Lonely Christmas”

James Brown’s “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto”

Aimee Mann’s “I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas”

Dropkick Murphys’ “The Season’s Upon Us”

Dotty Hopkins emailed:

We're enjoying our subscription very much even though it's frightening news most of the time, but about Twitter, I'm leaving it, as I just can't be involved with Musk any longer. One of its followers started Tribes. Is that worth going to as an alternative? I'll check out Post.

As I’ve said before, I’m sticking with Twitter until it becomes unbearable. I hope that eventually the imperatives of capitalism will force Elon Musk to stop being such an alt-right-enabling jerk who fuels the BS conspiracy theories of the Trumpian right. Tesla stock is tanking, and I assume the investors there are not happy with Musk. Might they force him to stop dumb-tweeting and find someone other than himself to run Twitter? Possibly. Meanwhile, I have looked to Post (https://post.news/davidcorn) and Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@DavidCorn) as alternatives. I’ve set up shop at each and post intermittently. Why these sites? Because that’s where I saw other Twitter-ers heading. It’s a bit of a nuisance to maintain all these social media feeds. (Don’t forget Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidcorndc/). So I have not checked out Tribes. 

Michael Jozwiak emailed:

I follow and appreciate your articles, and I have read your recent book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy and found it quite interesting and helpful in understanding our current situation. I also read your recent newsletter discussing Rachel Maddow’s podcast. It so happens that I’m currently reading American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis, by Adam Hochschild, which discusses the extremism during World War I and it’s immediate aftermath. It has been quite revealing to me how our current state of affairs is so similar to where we’ve been in the days of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Yes, we are not alone. Previous generations have faced similar challenges. I find that encouraging. There is hope in history. And I commend Hochschild’s book. He’s a sharp-eyed historian who writes elegantly.

Richard Hurt had this to say:

Thanks for making the columns shorter.

Okay.

MoxieCam™

“Moxie, rise and shine.”

“But it’s the shortest day of the year. Why bother? You get up and soon it’s so dark you feel like getting back in bed.”

“Good point. Move over.”

“But I’m so comfortable.”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

December 20, 2022: Have a merry (cracked) Christmas—a playlist; and more.

December 17, 2022: The GOP: still crazy after all these midterm elections; Mark Meadows’ lies; Elon Musk and the latest Big Lie of the right; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Shane Vaughn); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

December 13, 2022: Rachel Maddow and the rhymes of history; Amazon Prime’s The Peripheral does justice to William Gibson’s novel; twangy Americana from a new duo called Plains; and more.

December 10, 2022: Why the GOP establishment cannot save the GOP from Trump; Michael Pertschuk, thank you and RIP; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Rep. Paul Gosar); the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

December 6, 2022: How Trump-Russia denialism lead to Elon Musk’s dangerous #TwitterFiles failure; a Twitter exit strategy; Sonic Youth’s “Superstar”; and more.

December 3, 2022: The GOP and Nazis, nothing new; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Madison Cawthorn, for the last time?); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 30, 2022: What I learned during my Thanksgiving in Italy; why Andor may be the best Star Wars spinoff; and more.

November 17, 2022: Herschel Walker should release his medical records; giving thanks early; The Last Movie Stars reveals Paul Newman’s and Joanne Woodward’s most notable performances—their own lives; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 15, 2022: Is this the end of Donald Trump?; where were you when the Senate was called (I was with Jackson Browne and Tim Robbins); and Neil Young and Crazy Horse keep on riding with a new album; and more.

November 12, 2022: The 2022 midterms and the state of Trumpism; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Election Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 8, 2022: It’s election day…and it’s the Beatles; and more.

November 5, 2022: Has Biden lowballed the threat to American democracy; American Psychosis in the news; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Kari Lake); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.