In the 24-hour news cycle where headlines change by the minute, The New York Times bombshell report on Donald Trump’s taxes is a rare piece of investigative journalism that will no doubt stand the test of time and be quoted often by the authorities, reporters and politicians. The myth of Donald Trump has officially imploded. His reputation as a so-called dealmaker was just one big con. NYT correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum said:
“Do you know how high the bar is for the NYT to directly accuse someone, let alone a sitting president, of tax fraud, which is a federal crime? It’s very, very high. And here we are.”
Indeed the bar was so high it reportedly took 18 months to stitch the story together. Dan Rather says it shows, “The power, and importance, of deep digging investigative journalism!”
CNN’s Brian Stelter got a chance to talk with one of the three writers on the piece, Susanne Craig. He writes:
The trio obtained confidential tax returns. Financial records. Depositions. And so on. How? I’ll leave that up to you to speculate.
“We had thousands of documents. Hundreds of tax returns,” Craig told me. “Piecing all that together, understanding what they did, was beyond hard. We triangulated documents. Compared tax returns to financial statements and bank statements. And then talked to sources on it. Today we put it into one story, all explained. But it started with piles” of information sitting in the corner of the room.
Craig talked more about how the report came together on Good Morning America.
Trump, who's long claimed to be a self-made billionaire, along with his siblings, allegedly helped hide millions in gifts from their parents using fake corporations to hide the money, according to a NYT report. https://t.co/XDuh7ECYzn@NYTimes' @susannecraig joins us live. pic.twitter.com/nnJ32485QC
— Good Morning America (@GMA) October 3, 2018
The question now is whether there are still any legal consequences to what Trump is alleged to have done in the report. If so, New York officials want to get to the bottom of it. CNBC reports:
“The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation,” a spokesman from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance said in an email to CNBC.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio also writes:
“I’ve directed NYC’s Department of Finance to immediately investigate tax and housing violations and to work with NY State to find out if appropriate taxes were paid.’
White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders issued a statement condemning the NYT report, but not denying it.
Lengthy statement from Sanders on NYT’s big tax story: pic.twitter.com/XDmFGc9O0M
— Tarini Parti (@tparti) October 2, 2018
Sarah Sanders statement hitting the NYT for the "misleading" story on Trump's taxes/fraud does not allege a single missed fact or any specific problem. Vocabulary/diction sounds like Trump.
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) October 2, 2018
This morning, Trump finally addressed the report.
This tweet essentially says “people have written before that my wealth is a con and I still got elected so it shouldn’t be explored.” https://t.co/jB6kQxhiDL
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 3, 2018