July 30, 2021
This will be very brief because I am without power again, and am operating on a generator that is undoubtedly keeping the neighbors awake.
Today, the Department of Justice ruled that the Treasury Department can release to Congress six years of former president Trump’s tax returns. Trump was the first president since Richard M. Nixon to refuse to disclose his taxes, and the House Ways and Means Committee requested them in April 2019.
The fight to obtain Trump’s tax returns has stretched on for years, and it has finally been resolved in a way consistent with the law that covers this case, which says: “Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure.”
It remains possible that Trump will contest this decision in court. If he does not, Congress will finally have access to Trump’s tax returns.
Incredibly, after all these years, this is not today’s big story.
Today’s bigger story is that the House Oversight Committee released notes taken by the acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue during a phone call between former president Donald Trump and acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen on December 27, 2020. Rosen took over at the Department of Justice after Attorney General William Barr left on December 14.
The notes record how the former president tried to get the Department of Justice to say that the 2020 election was “corrupt” in order to overturn it. In the call, Trump listed the many ways in which he believed the results were false, insisting that the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan all were “corrupted” and said it was statistically impossible for him to have lost the election.
Rosen “Told him flat out that much of the info he is getting is false, +/or just not supported by the evidence… we looked at allegations but they don’t pan out.”
When Rosen told the former president that the Department of Justice “can’t and won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way,” Trump said: “Don’t expect you to do that, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen.”
The January 6 insurrection was ten days later.
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Notes:
https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-fraud-b1f1488796c9a98c4b1a9061a6c7f49d
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https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/1419111/download
In what world will djt not contest the ruling to release his tax returns? He will tie this up in court as long as the law allows....and then some. He has been abusing the court system his entire adult life.
Today my concern lies with the 6 million plus households facing eviction as the moratorium ends. This has been an untenable situation for both sides. Funds have been hard to obtain due to red tape. Landlords are refusing government payouts because of the strings attached and because they think they can find more stable tenants. Tenants being evicted are still on the hook for back rent even if their landlords refused government funds. Evicted tenants are effectively black listed and can’t find landlords who will accept them.
These are families already struggling and now facing homelessness in the middle of a surging pandemic where affordable housing has dried up.
As a landlord, I understand how difficult this year has been. When our tenant had her hours cut she called us in a panic. We agreed to cut her rent in hall until her employment improved. Now a year later, she’s fully employed and we’re raising her rent gradually until she’s back to full rent.
Deferring rent doesn’t work, it only digs a deeper and deeper hole for those least able to pay it back. States were allotted funds to distribute and many have slow walked that distribution. The money sits in state coffers while their citizens face eviction.
This is an unfolding tragedy.
The 2020 attempted coup may not have been successful, but the enemy is already setting the game so they can do it successfully in 2024. Things are more dangerous now than they were a year ago.
And the pandemic is doing a great job of tearing us apart socially, so that it will be even easier politically.
There are times when the only way I can be an optimist is to just say "fuck it." We HAVE to win.