While the House Intelligence Committee is gearing up for a full investigation of one whistleblower’s complaint, and the White House’s attempts to cover it up, another committee is sitting on a whistleblower complaint that came directly to it.
Rep. Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been sitting on a complaint from an IRS whistleblower who might have evidence of Donald Trump attempting to corrupt an audit of his personal tax returns. Neal has used the whistleblower’s complaint, reportedly, in the committee’s suit against the Trump administration for its refusal to provide copies of Trump’s tax returns. Neal has been frustrating many of his colleagues (and everyone else resisting Trump) for his extreme slow-walking of getting Trump’s taxes and in general of pushing the issue of Trump’s financial corruption.
Ditto Rep. Peter DeFazio, who’s chairman of Transportation and Infrastructure, the committee that oversees Trump’s D.C. hotel. The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold explained to NPR’s Terry Gross that “Trump’s D.C. hotel is located in a taxpayer-owned building under a lease from the GSA, the General Services Administration.” Which means DeFazio could be digging into Trump’s use of the hotel—the taxpayer-owned property—to make personal money off of foreign dignitaries and others, known in the Constitution as emoluments and a no-no for presidents. DeFazio “has the power to really dig into it,” Fahrenthold says, but he’s not doing it. The “pushback from DeFazio’s underlings, other members of Congress,” Fahrenthold has been told, “has been that DeFazio is slow-walking this because he wants to make an infrastructure deal.”
Well, Neal and DeFazio, here’s your chance to shine, all wrapped up in the Ukraine impeachment. At Vox, Matt Yglesias points to a nugget in the Trump-Zelensky transcript that’s gotten very little attention. Zelensky, being the supplicant in this call, trying to jolly Trump into providing the assistance that Congress has already approved, says, “I would like to tell you that I actually have a lot of Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually, the last time I traveled to the United States I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.”
Boom. A foreign leader who wants something from Trump is telling him he has put money directly in Trump’s pocket, because he knows that’s how the game is played with Trump. It’s blatant corruption, it’s costing the taxpayers a lot of money, and Congress has to take it seriously.
This is a Creative Commons article. The original version of this article appeared here.
Remember good ole Al Capone, Hoover couldn’t make a case, but that pesky old IRS got him,let’s hope all the alphabet soup departments can join together and make it a slam dunk
Yeah where are the IRS. Now that Nancy has the orange gorilla ???? on the ropes they could have a tripe day. He’s under audit and that just came out that he’s trying to massage a agent on that. And then you have these gadflies sitting on their hands. Trump hat are they worried someone might get upset ????. To freakin bad. You have three people going at trump. And two are female. I don’t want to sound sexist but What The F-ck. Is Adam Schiff the only “MAN” in congress. They need to put there big boy pants ???? on and hit trump with everything they can think of. Trumps lawyers need to have one of those moments where they turn to trump and say “What The F-ck Did You Do””. Get them so busy dodging paperwork and subpoena and warrants that they start making mistakes. You read about how we got this thing me on a subpoena but we haven’t heard anything and this ones in a holding whatever. WTF. They got that white collar crime attorney. Turn him loose. In all this someone’s committed a crime. Charge the idiot. Enforce your dam subpoena’s. Geez what gives.