Month: December 2022

White House officials are of the view that Republicans will overstep in their demand for oversight requests and they would boomerang on them…writes T.N. Ashok

With Republicans re-taking the House of Representatives in the November Midterms, the clock seems to have turned a full circle, with loyalists of former US President Donald Trump in GOP wanting to launch probes against incumbent President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden for the latter’s China connections in what seems to be a vengeance for January 6 probe report becoming public linking Trump with inciting the riots on Capitol Hill.

But the GOP faces a tough call from the White House whose lawyers have told two leading Republicans that the oversight requests they issued during the last Congress would be invalid in the present Congress and they have to be reissued when the Congress meets in January 2023.

Trump loyalists in the Republican party had said they would scrap all the investigations against the former president including the January 6 panel which preempted them by releasing its final report and the DoJ has referred criminal charges against the ex-president besides the litany of multiple probes by the New York Attorney general for tax fraud at Trump Businesses and the Jury accusing him of criminal avoidance of taxes.

According to a top White House lawyer, two leading Republicans were told to reissue their oversight requests.

The letters sent to Reps. Jim Jordan and James Comer, the incoming chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, give a sneak peek at how the White House plans to contend with what are expected to be a litany of Republican probes which Biden’s team views as politically motivated.

A leading US media outlet report says that the White House has been working during the last months to assemble a battery of lawyers and other advisers to handle an expected onslaught of oversight requests.

Thursday’s letter is the first indication of the team’s approach � one that vows cooperation but nonetheless pushes back on what the White House views as over-steps.

Jordan and Comer launched their requests for records from the Biden administration once it became clear that the November midterms would allow them to retake the house of reps. They had set deadlines in December.

But in his letter, Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber says the two Republicans don’t yet have a standing to make their requests — and that they would need to resubmit their requests once the new Congress begins in the New Year, hardly two days away for 2023 to dawn.

“Congress has not delegated such authority to individual members of Congress who are not committee chairmen, and the House has not done so under its current Rules,” wrote Sauber, who is one of the White House’s top oversight lawyers, CNN said.

“Should the Committee issue similar or other requests in the 118th Congress, we will review and respond to them in good faith, consistent with the needs and obligations of both branches. We expect the new Congress will undertake its oversight responsibilities in the same spirit of good faith,” Sauber wrote.

Politico first broke the news on the letters sent by White House counsel Sauber to the two Republicans.

House Republicans have pledged to investigate multiple issues related to the Biden administration, including the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Hunter Biden’s business engagements and the federal government’s response to school board meetings, media reports said.

Jordan and Comer have threatened to use subpoenas to obtain documents and information from the administration.

The White House said Biden administrations would remain focused on more important national priorities and foreign policy issues even as the Republicans mount their demands for investigations.

Media reports said that the House Judiciary Republicans responded to the White House lawyers’ letter on Twitter accusing the Biden administration of “playing games”, and adding: “It shows how scared you are of important congressional oversight, particularly one where your administration targeted parents protesting at local school board meetings.”

“This is why it’s so important for us to hit the ground running on January 3rd,” they added.

In a statement, Comer said: “President Biden promised to have the most transparent administration in history but at every turn the Biden White House seeks to obstruct congressional oversight and hide information from the American people.”

White House officials are of the view that Republicans will overstep in their demand for oversight requests and they would boomerang on them.

The American public will not swallow the Republican tirade. The Democrats are voicing their protests to the Republicans demand for oversights claiming they were based on conjectures and that the proposed investigations were actually based on conspiracy theories and politically motivated charges.

“As we have over the past two years, we intend to work in good faith to provide appropriate information to Congress, but Americans have made clear they expect their leaders in Washington to work together on their top priorities, like lowering costs. That’s what the president will focus on, and we hope House Republicans join him,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for White House Counsel’s Office, said in a statement.

ALSO READ: Trump’s tax returns to be released after long fight

The release raises the potential of new revelations about Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s…reports Asian Lite News

A House committee is set to release six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, pulling back the curtain on financial records that the former president fought for years to keep secret.

The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee voted last week to release the returns, with some redactions of sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers and contact information. Their dissemination comes in the waning days of Democrats’ control of the House and as Trump’s fellow Republicans prepare to retake power in the chamber.

The committee obtained six years of Trump’s personal and business tax records, from 2015 to 2020, while investigating what it said in a Dec. 20 report was the Internal Revenue Service’s failure to pursue mandatory audits of Trump on a timely basis during his presidency, as required under the tax agency’s protocol.

The release raises the potential of new revelations about Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s. The returns could take on added significance now that Trump has launched a third campaign for the White House.

Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, broke political norms by refusing to make public his returns as he sought the presidency — though he did give some limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms.

Instead, Trump has touted his wealth in the annual financial statements he gives to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place on rankings of the world’s billionaires.

Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit alleging Trump and his Trump Organization inflated asset values on the statements as part of a yearslong fraud. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.

It will not be the first time Trump’s tax returns have been under scrutiny. In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that showed that Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.

A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, as well as no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.

In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded a post-Watergate requirement mandating audits of a president’s tax filings.

The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when Ways and Means chair Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the tax returns.

By comparison, there were audits of President Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. A spokesperson for former President Barack Obama said Obama was audited in each of his eight years in office.

An accompanying report from Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation raised multiple red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filings, including his carryover losses, deductions tied to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children that could be taxable gifts.

The House passed a bill in response that would require audits of any president’s income tax filings. Republicans strongly opposed the legislation, raising concerns that a law requiring audits would infringe on taxpayer privacy and could lead to audits being weaponized for political gain.

Republicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee’s new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.

The measure, approved mostly along party lines, has little chance of becoming law in the final days of this Congress. Rather, it is seen as a starting point for future efforts to bolster oversight of the presidency.

Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public. Trump bucked that trend as a candidate and as president, repeatedly asserting that his taxes were “under audit” and couldn’t be released.

Trump’s lawyers were repeatedly denied in their quest to keep his tax returns from the Ways and Means Committee. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in August upheld a lower-court ruling granting the committee access.

Trump’s lawyers also tried and failed to block the Manhattan district attorney’s office from getting Trump’s tax records as part of its investigation into his business practices, losing twice in the Supreme Court.

Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent Manhattan criminal trial that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010.

Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through the Trump Organization.

The Trump Organization was convicted earlier this month on tax fraud charges for helping some executives dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars.

ALSO READ: Trump ‘lit that fire’ of Capitol insurrection, reveals Jan. 6 report

At least 40 deaths in western New York, most of them in Buffalo, have been reported from the blizzard that raged across much of the country…reports Asian Lite News

Roads reopened Thursday in storm-besieged Buffalo as authorities continued searching for people who may have died or are stuck and suffering after last week’s blizzard.

The driving ban in New York’s second-most-populous city was lifted just after midnight Thursday, Mayor Byron Brown announced.

At least 40 deaths in western New York, most of them in Buffalo, have been reported from the blizzard that raged across much of the country, with Buffalo in its crosshairs on Friday and Saturday.

“Significant progress has been made” on snow removal, Brown said at a news conference late Wednesday. Suburban roads, major highways and Buffalo Niagara International Airport had already reopened.

Still, Brown urged residents not to drive if they didn’t have to.

The National Guard was going door-to-door to check on people who lost power, and authorities faced the possibility of finding more victims as snow melted amid increasingly mild weather. Buffalo police and officers from other law enforcement agencies also searched for victims, sometimes using officers’ personal snowmobiles, trucks and other equipment.

Some victims have yet to be identified, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a storm briefing Thursday.

“There are families in this community who still have not been able to identify where a loved one is, they’re missing,” he said.

With the death toll already surpassing that of the area’s notorious Blizzard of 1977 and rising daily, local officials faced questions about the response to last week’s storm. They insisted that they prepared but the weather was extraordinary, even for a region prone to powerful winter storms.

“The city did everything that it could under historic blizzard conditions,” the mayor said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, officials watched a forecast that calls for some rain later in the week as snow melts in temperatures approaching or topping 50 degrees (10 Celsius).

The National Weather Service forecast that any flooding would be minor, but state and local officials said they were preparing nonetheless. Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was ready to deploy nearly 800,000 sandbags and more than 300 pumps and generators for flooding response efforts if needed.

During his briefing, Poloncarz apologized for publicly criticizing the city of Buffalo’s snow removal efforts as too slow, even “embarrassing,” a day earlier.

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