Trump tax returns, Mueller probe report become focus of continuing spat

WASHINGTON: Rising demands for release of US President Donald Trump’s tax returns and the full Mueller probe report, which leaks from some investigators say is more damning for the President than revealed, is pointing to an expanding political dogfight in Washington that is expected to continue into the 2020 election campaign.

President Trump on Wednesday rebuffed a formal request from the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to the Internal Revenue Service seeking six years of his personal and business tax returns, claiming it couldn’t be released because he was under audit. He was brusquely told by a lawmaker that they did not ask him; the request went to the IRS.

At the same time, the House Judiciary Committee authorized its chairman to use a subpoena to try to force the Justice Department to give Congress a full copy of the special counsel Mueller’s report and all of the underlying evidence used to reach his conclusions on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The twin challenges to Trump from a Democrat-majority Congress came even as investigators attached to the now disbanded Mueller team began leaking to the US media that the evidence they gathered on the President’s obstruction of justice was “alarming” and “significant” and a four-page summary released by the Trump-appointed attorney general of the 400-page report was sanitized.

In his letter to lawmakers, attorney general William Barr had said the special counsel Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia and he did not reach a conclusion “one way or the other” on the obstruction of justice issue, leading him (Barr) to determine that the evidence was not sufficient to indict the President. That’s not entirely correct, some investigators, dismissed by Trump supporters as “disgruntled” Democrat-supporting leakers, are telling intermediaries who are relaying it to the media.

“They are a bunch of sneaky, unethical leakers. And they are rabid Democrats who hate the president of United States,” huffed Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani in a TV interview. “I am absolutely confident that the report will bear out the conclusions: no obstruction, no Russian collusion of any kind. It will bear that out.”

Trump himself lashed out at the renewed pressure from lawmakers seeking the full Mueller report and his tax returns, saying he is being constantly audited because he was prominent and there is big money involved, although they are not considered mitigating factors in withholding the returns, something no President has done.

“There is nothing we can ever give to the Democrats that will make them happy. This is the highest level of Presidential Harassment in the history of our Country!” he griped on Twitter, inviting ridicule at the persistence with which he had kept demanding President Obama’s birth certificate.




In fact, the week has seen Presidential behavior that is bizarre even by Trump’s own standards. On Tuesday, in an appearance with the NATO Secretary General, Trump kept repeating his father was born in Germany (even though it is well-known and recorded that he was born in New York; his grandfather was born in Germany). Then he went on to claim that noise from windmills cause cancer. He also sneered at Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s New Green Deal, referring to her working class background as a bartender.

None of this seem to matter to his base, where he retains strong support; in fact, some of his most ardent supporters want him to turn around the inquiry and begin a probe into how and why there was an investigation into the Russia collusion issue.

“According to polling, few people seem to care about the Russian Collusion Hoax, but some Democrats are fighting hard to keep the Witch Hunt alive. They should focus on legislation or, even better, an investigation of how the ridiculous Collusion Delusion got started - so illegal!” Trump tweeted on Thursday.