I don't know that saying nobody outside of Maddow's show ever heard of David Cay Johnston is completely accurate. Johnston's 2016 bio of Trump skewered Trump and was one of the go to books for explaining what a con man/shyster Trump is.

Before the election, I saw him on a variety of shows talking about his Trump book. In one interview, Johnston was asked if he ever thought the term "Presidential biographer" would need to be used when introducing him. Johnston laughed at the preposterous nature of such a suggestion before answering that it may be true, since he would like to write a book about Lincoln one day.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Donald...s=donald+trump

You live in a different reality than everyone else does, nobody knows who the **** that guy is, nobody read that book. Nobody remembers him at all, variety of shows or not.

I think that's the biggest problem for all of us--people on this board live in a vastly different reality than everyone else in america and to me most of you do not get it at all. At least I'm aware of this.

And this board isn't close to the worst--the worst is the liberal elitists who are completely stupid who get laughed at by everybody who isn't an idiot and everyone hates them and they're all completely unaware b/c they're drenched in smugness (deservedly so), the other worst is the people who only get whatever they get and believe all the nonsense and all that stuff.

tl;dr WAAF.

His name is worth money. I suppose you could argue Donald's genius at self-marketing is what made it worth money. He seemed pretty willing to license his name to almost anything if it added to his bottom line. Partners saw his name as adding an aura of luxury to their product. Very little work on Donald's end, he probably saw it as practically free money.

What is the worst case scenario you envision? Obviously you think there is a decent chance that they would reveal something illegal.

Seems unlikely to me you are going to find anything illegal in his 1040 filings. Actually it was a pretty simple filing as far as IRS filings go. Schedule A, Schedule C and some other form in relation to line 21. Could have been some forms related to Schedule A too. The schedule C was from Melania's business interests I am pretty sure. Regarding line 21 on the 1040 I guess that was a tax loss carry forward.

The other thing is that I believe that his assets and liabilities are on the balance sheet of his corporation which I am sure is a C Corp. so his corporation files taxes and they reflect his business transactions. So I think finding tax law violations in his 1040's is pretty much a fools errand.

The returns don't have to demonstrate a literal bribe in direct language to justify a concern. But to answer your question:

1) Trump and high-level personnel in the Trump organization have claimed both major dealings, no dealings with Russia, and everything in between - so lies have certainly been told there. Given Trump Jr's now well-known comments about their business dealings with Russia as one example, there shouldn't be much question that Trump has misrepresented his ties with Russians as part of his business enterprise.

2) Many of his associates and advisors have strong Russian connections as well, and generally haven't been very transparent about them.

3) Trump has opted to deliberately conceal his tax returns, which he feels strongly enough about to both break a clear campaign promise as well as decades of tradition designed to show transparency and a lack of potential conflicts of interest. Beyond that, he's also given senseless excuses to justify it which strongly suggests he feels that there is potentially damaging information of some sort in there - Russia-anything isn't the only possibility but in context it's a strong contender.

4) He's taken the above line even as there are multiple intelligence agencies stating that Russia interfered with the election process (a claim which he immediately denied despite any factual basis for doing so).

...actually this could go on a while, but the short version is that he we know he has many meaningful ties to Russia, that he lies about them, and that he's manufactured nonsensical reasons to conceal the returns that would help clarify the financial extent of those ties to the American people. This is far past the point of speculation, the only questions are how much conflict of interest those ties show, and whether there are actually worse-then-Russia items in there somewhere.

Muslim Ban 1.1 stayed.

McCain: "The sen from Ky is now working for Putin."

Them's fightin words! Well, at least they used to be...




https://twitter.com/reporterjoe/stat...96982797783040

Waiting for Trump's tweets

As to David Cay Johnston, I knew the name and recognized his face but wouldn't have been able to put the two together on the street. I do recall the article he got the Pulitzer for or at least the political chatter that followed it. But I think it's fair to say he's well outside of the top 50 political voices even after excluding actual politicians.

Also, it's Johnston with a "t," not Johnson as you originally posted it. Understandable mistake and one I could have made myself a day ago, but still speaks to the point that this guy is a D-list figure in this arena.

This one is much tougher to uphold (the stay) IMO. The first one was DOA, i think the white house came to the conclusion that even if they had gone to the supreme court it would have been shot down (personally i think there was a chance for a unanimous shoot down or every judge except for Thomas). The most offensive thing in that first one though, constitutionally, was the preference for minority religions. With that gone, its a tougher sell. Tough to see how this one plays out. Standing is also tougher with this one.

I'm with you on points 1 and 2 - I just don't understand how his returns could ever prove either of them. The financial dealings of high-level personnel in the Trump administration, Trump advisors, and Trump's associates are not going to be exposed through Trump's tax returns.

On points 3 and 4 - Trump could just be holding his returns back precisely because there is nothing to see. He'll wait a few months for the speculation to run rife, then release his completely innocuous tax returns, and tweet "HAHH FAKE MEDIA! Trying to "incriminate" me for no reason AGAIN!"

If he were taking bribes from Russia, the money received wouldn't be in his name, it'd be offshore, he wouldn't be disclosing it to the IRS, and he wouldn't even be attempting to even take control of it until after his presidency. What connections do people think they are going to see?

Why do you think the courts should be deferential to Team Trump's facially religion-neutral defenses of the ban when they are on the record wanting a Muslim ban and the motivations they are putting forth for this one are not supported either by empirical reality or by their own related actions?

Apparently stayed due to all his racist comments on the campgain trail. Nice to see someone holding him accountable for being a white supremist. I guess you can't say...

Muslim ban
I support a Muslim ban
We should ban all Muslims

A few months later...

No way this EO is a Muslim ban.

How so? Won't they just build less efficient cars overseas now?

These judges are moronic liberals. They have zero right to examine intent when making these rulings. These things can only be stayed based on the letter of the law and this EO unlike the last one was done that way. This will be overturned in the Supreme Court like the other one probably would have been anyway despite the fact it was borderline on a couple of things.

So what you are saying is you don't know anything about the law? Got it. Thanks.

No, no, companies were just building the cars in Mexico because it's...easier to build fuel efficient engines and lighter weight cars there?

Any defeat for Trump is a good thing.

False. False. False, False. False.

I started reading the decision and have changed my mind about standing. IN addition to the states one of the parties to the lawsuit is a muslim citizen resident of hawaii who has a mother in law from Syria who will now not be able to visit him and his children. That should do it.

Now that I'm reading the decision my mind is changing.

How can he read Trump's mind? He knows for sure this is a Muslim ban because he went off the rails a few times during the campaign trail. And as I said and even numerous lawyers have said on any major news network. Judges are only allowed to be reviewing what is in the order and if it's legal, not why it was written

lol, clearly we now know the "L" stands for "Law school"

I tried to help you out, bro. This just isn't true.

Oh please tell us how the law works, those people who swear Jeff Sessions didn't lie when he intentionally said untrue things under oath.