Donald Trump ordered to hand over tax returns, as first transcripts from witnesses in impeachment probe released
A US court has ruled Donald Trump must hand over eight years of tax returns, but the President hasn’t given up the fight to keep his financial records private.
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PRESIDENT Donald Trump has been ordered by a US appeals court to release eight years of tax returns, dealing a blow to his attempts to keep his personal earnings private.
The decision is the latest development in a years-long effort to obtain copies of Mr Trump’s taxes, which he promised during the campaign to make public after an audit but has since refused to share.
A three-judge panel in Manhattan rejected an appeal by the president’s lawyers challenging a subpoena by New York prosecutors that demanded that his accounting firm hand over the records.
The federal judges, however, refused to take a position on claims by Mr Trump’s lawyers that as America’s leader he is immune from any criminal investigation.
“We emphasise again the narrowness of the issue before us,” they wrote in their decision.
“This appeal does not require us to consider whether the president is immune from indictment and prosecution while in office, nor to consider whether the president may lawfully be ordered to produce documents for use in a state criminal proceeding,” the judges added.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow said the Republican president will appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court, whose 5-4 conservative majority includes two justices appointed by the president.
Mr Trump had filed suit against Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, a Democrat who had subpoenaed the accounting firm Mazars USA, seeking access to the president’s returns dating back to 2011.
Mr Vance is investigating payments made by Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s former personal lawyer, to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who claimed to have had a sexual liaison with Mr Trump before he ran for president in 2016.
Mr Cohen is currently serving three years in prison after admitting paying hush money — in violation of campaign finance laws — to Daniels and another woman, tax fraud, and lying to Congress.
TRUMP RAGES AS IMPEACHMENT PROBE HEATS UP
Meanwhile, Mr Trump has lashed out at an impeachment probe against him as the three committees leading the Democrats’ inquiry have released the first transcripts of closed-door interviews as part of an investigation into the US President’s dealings with Ukraine.
It comes on a difficult day for Mr Trump who also lost a court appeal against releasing his tax returns, and faced a defamation lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll who accused him of sexual assault.
The panels released testimony from former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Ms Yovanovitch told House investigators in a transcript that Ukrainian officials warned her in advance that Rudy Giuliani and other allies of Mr Trump were planning to “do things, including to me” and were “looking to hurt” her.
The former envoy, who was pushed out of her job in May on Mr Trump’s orders, testified that a senior Ukrainian official told her that “I really need to watch my back”.
Ms Yovanovitch offered new threads of information – including the potential that Mr Trump was directly involved in a phone call with Mr Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, and the Ukrainians dating back to January 2018 – while pushing back on Republican questions suggesting that she harboured opposition to Mr Trump.
The impeachment panels also released testimony from Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Mr McKinley, a 37-year veteran career diplomat, testified that he decided to resign from his post as a senior adviser to Pompeo after his repeated efforts to get the State Department to issue a statement of support for Ms Yovanovitch after the transcript of the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call was released.
“To see the impugning of somebody I know to be a serious, committed colleague in the manner that it was done raised alarm bells for me,” he said.
Mr McKinley said he was already concerned about politicisation at the State Department and that the refusal to publicly back Ms Yovanovitch convinced him it was time to leave.
“To see the emerging information on the engagement of our missions to procure negative political information for domestic purposes, combined with the failure I saw in the building to provide support for our professional cadre in a particularly trying time, I think the combination was a pretty good reason to decide enough, that I had no longer a useful role to play,” he said.
Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said the panels released the transcripts so “the American public will begin to see for themselves”.
Republicans have called for the release of the transcripts as Democrats have held the initial interviews in private.
TRUMP WANTS WHISTLEBLOWER OUTED
meanwhile, Mr Trump again demanded that the whistleblower who first sounded the alarm over his “quid pro quo” call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky testify to Congress, calling on the media to expose the person’s identity while refusing to rule out a government shutdown as a consequence of the investigation.
Meanwhile, a White House lawyer suspected of involvement in the Ukraine scandal refused to testify on Monday (local time) in the congressional impeachment investigation of Mr Trump, as three other witnesses were also expected no-shows.
John Eisenberg, Mr Trump’s deputy counsel for National Security Affairs, defied a summons to appear before the three House panels conducting the investigation, a sign of renewed stonewalling by the White House as Democrats press to take the inquiry into a new public phase.
Mr Trump said early on Monday he felt there was “no reason” for witnesses to answer questions by investigators, in particular about his call with his Ukrainian counterpart that is at the heart of the probe.
“What I said on the phone call with the Ukrainian President is ‘perfectly’ stated,” Mr Trump said on Twitter.
“There is no reason to call witnesses to analyse my words and meaning. This is just another Democrat Hoax that I have had to live with from the day I got elected.”
Mr Eisenberg, who by midmorning had yet to appear for a scheduled 9am (1am AEDT) closed-door deposition, is reported to have been on the July 25 call.
TURNBULL CALL LINKED TO TRUMP IMPEACHMENT PROBE
It comes as the leaked phone call between former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Mr Trump in early 2017 will likely become an integral part of impending presidential impeachment hearings in Washington, according to Mr Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“They are inextricably linked,” Mr Bannon said in an exclusive interview with The Australian.
Mr Bannon claimed that Republicans will argue that the divulgence of the Turnbull-Trump phone call, which was highly awkward for the two longtime allies, was the reason the White House wanted to curb the records of conversations between Mr Trump and other foreign leaders.
Mr Bannon, who was Mr Trump’s chief strategist at the time of the call, said the leak led the White House to put a record of similar conversations in secure online servers.
A major part of the Democrat-led impeachment investigation is why the record of the controversial phone call between Mr Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in July was placed in a classified server, reducing access to it.
Democrats have argued the move was an attempt to keep the call secret, and it is that conversation that has triggered an impeachment inquiry. Mr Bannon, however, told The Australian, it was purely to follow rules put in place after the Turnbull debacle. “100 per cent, it comes directly from the Turnbull phone call,” Mr Bannon said.
Mr Bannon also said the fallout from the call stunned the White House who had been unaware of the sheer number of people who had access to records of the conversation.
“Hundreds of people got access to this because the bureaucracy had expended,” Mr Bannon told The Australian. “So we said at that time ‘this has to be really restricted for people like Malcolm Turnbull to feel that they can have an open and direct conversation with the President’.”
Mr Bannon also said that the leak enforced restrictions on who could listen to such calls.
“How could Trump trust any of these people when for the first time in American history they leaked two entire transcripts with foreign leaders (Australia and Mexico),” he said.
In their 2017 phone call, Mr Turnbull argued with Mr Trump over an Obama-era deal to resettle refugees from Nauru and Manus Island in the US.
Mr Trump called the deal “terrible”, describing it as one that would make him look “weak”, “foolish” and “ineffective” given his tough stance on immigration.
For his part, Mr Bannon said he thought it was “a very good call”.
“I thought that Turnbull laid out his case, Trump was very blunt, but it set up the ability for us to work at a more junior level with your ambassador and other people to work through the issues.”
Mr Bannon said he thought the call was leaked to make Mr Trump look like “a racist and a xenophobe”.
WHISTLEBLOWER ‘READY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS’
Meanwhile, a lawyer for the whistleblower who raised alarms about Mr Trump’s dealings with Ukraine has said his client is willing to answer written questions submitted by House Republicans.
The surprise offer, made to Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, would allow Republicans to ask questions of the whistleblower, who spurred the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry, without having to go through the committee’s chairman, Democrat Adam Schiff.
Lawyer Mark Zaid tweeted that the whistleblower would answer questions directly from Republican members “in writing, under oath & penalty of perjury,” part of a bid to stem escalating efforts by Mr Trump and his Republican allies to unmask the person’s identity. Only queries seeking the person’s identity won’t be answered, he said.
“Being a whistleblower is not a partisan job nor is impeachment an objective. That is not our role,” Mr Zaid tweeted. “So we have offered to DevinNunes. We will ensure timely answers,” he said.
Mr Nunes’ office did not have immediate comment.
The offer comes as Mr Trump has repeatedly demanded the release of the whistleblower’s identity, tweeting on Sunday (local time) that the person “must come forward.”
The whistleblower raised concerns about Mr Trump’s July 25 call with Mr Zelensky, in which he pressed the Ukrainian president to investigate Mr Trump’s political rivals. That call became the catalyst for the impeachment inquiry.
Many people listened to my phone call with the Ukrainian President while it was being made. I never heard any complaints. The reason is that it was totally appropriate, I say perfect. Republicans have never been more unified, and my Republican Approval Rating is now 95%!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2019
The whistleblower’s second-hand account of the call has been providing a road map for House Democrats investigating whether the president and others in his orbit pressured Ukraine to probe political opponents, including former Vice President Joe Biden.
“Reveal the Whistleblower and end the Impeachment Hoax!” Mr Trump tweeted. Mr Trump later pushed the news media to divulge the whistleblower’s identity, asserting that the person’s accounting of events is incorrect. The whistleblower’s complaint has been corroborated by people with first-hand knowledge of the events who have appeared on Capitol Hill.
“They know who it is. You know who it is. You just don’t want to report it,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House. “And you know you’d be doing the public a service if you did.” US whistleblower laws exist to protect the identity and careers of people who bring forward accusations of wrongdoing by government officials. Politicians in both parties have historically backed those protections.
TRUMP BOOED AGAIN
Meanwhile, Mr Trump has called out “fake news” reports that he was booed for the second time in seven days at a sporting event over the weekend as he watched mixed martial artists brawl in a cage in New York.
Mr Trump sat close to the action as UFC fighters delivered vicious kicks and punches to the face and body of their opponents, regularly drawing blood, at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden.
The US President was seen clapping and at one point stood up for a better view as 20,000 pumped-up fans screamed and swore amid an electric atmosphere at the pay-per-view spectacle.
Jeers rang out as Mr Trump, wearing a dark suit and red tie, punched his fist and waved at the crowd as he walked into the arena.
Mr Trump also retweeted a message from a fan who called the booing reports “bulls**t”.
Many fans also cheered the US leader and there was no repeat of the loud chants of “lock him up” that greeted his appearance at a World Series baseball game last weekend.
“We’d be having more fun if he wasn’t here,” 50-year-old Anna Torres, who booed loudly with her boyfriend, said.
Some spectators, however, were delighted to see the president, who has a fight of his own on his hands back in Washington with the Democrats’ bid to impeach him.
“It’s disrespectful to boo because he is our president,” said Nico Ferranti, 30, adding that he was unsurprised to see the president turn up.
“If things are actually open and transparent, as purported, I would imagine that we would participate, but again, if they’re going to have different rules and move the goalposts all the time, that is just not a fair process.
“In the United States, you are innocent until proven guilty. Right now the President is being told he’s guilty by the Democrats and we’re having to prove innocence without knowing any information. That is not OK.”
Originally published as Donald Trump ordered to hand over tax returns, as first transcripts from witnesses in impeachment probe released