The conversation around Donald Trump’s tax returns started during his run for the presidency in 2016 after repeatedly refusing to show his tax returns. This week, The New York Times released a bombshell report finally uncovering his past New York state returns and financial history. Now, people are calling for Trump’s arrest after proof of years of tax evasion, with the Manhattan District Attorney’s (DA) office saying that the president could now face a tax fraud probe.
In the Times investigative report, the writers state that “the tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.”
The Hill reported the DA’s office has submitted a court filing on the matter between Trump and Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. over prosecutors’ subpoena for the president’s financial records.
“Even if the grand jury were testing the truth of public allegations alone, such reports, taken together, fully justify the scope of the grand jury subpoena at issue in this case,” the office wrote in the report, according to The Hill.
“In particular, public reports have alleged that Trump Organization executives used fraudulent financial statements as part of long-standing practices of overstating assets sent to potential business partners and lenders and minimizing assets in tax returns.”
The court will begin to hear oral arguments from both parties on Friday. Last year, the DA’s office issued Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, a grand jury subpoena to investigate his tax returns and finances. In a court filing back in August, the DA cited that the subpoena was part of an investigation into “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”