Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign for the White House is about to collide with an 1892 Supreme Court decision and a federal criminal trial rule.
David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author who teaches business regulation, property and tax law at Syracuse University’s law and graduate business schools.
Johnston’s innovative coverage of tax issues in The New York Times prompted tax policy changes by Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush that Congress valued at more than $250 billion.
He is the immediate past president of the 5,700-member Investigative Reporters & Editors organization. He is also co-founder and chairman emeritus of a lodging management company.
Johnston wrote a best-selling trilogy on the American Economy – Perfectly Legal (taxes), Free Lunch (subsidies) and The Fine Print (monopolies) – as well as a casino industry exposé, Temples of Chance, and edited the anthology Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality. His next book is The Prosperity Tax: A New Federal Tax Code for the 21st Century Economy. He was a consultant on electricity regulation and rare earths for the Netflix series House of Cards.
When he was 18 years old the San Jose Mercury recruited him, hiring him a few months later as a staff writer. His investigations over the next four decades appeared in that paper and The New York Times, as well as in the Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer. He exposed LAPD political spying and brutality; revealed news blackouts and manipulations that forced a six-station broadcast chain off the air; solved an especially vicious murder by confronting the real killer, winning freedom for an innocent man; deconstructed the way foreign agents from South Africa and Taiwan secretly influenced American government policy; and explained the economics of former GE chairman Jack Welch’s retirement perks, prompting Welch to relinquish them.
The Washington Monthly described him as “one of America’s most important journalists,” and the Portland Oregonian called his work the equal of the original muckrakers: Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair.
Hint: He’s going to act like a maniac and incite his followers—some of whom may get violent.
This Friday news dump is a huge deal, and should be the final nail in his coffin.
Congress must investigate fully now that we know Trump was faking his wealth and may have been vulnerable to foreign espionage and fraudulent money-generating schemes.
The AG’s Senate testimony came the day after a really bad day for Trump and a great day for accountability, democracy and our Constitution.
Desperate to hide his finances from the American people and with no legal ground to stand on as the truth closes in, the president throws up a legal Hail Mary.
The law is clear, and it leaves no wiggle room. The consequences for breaking it include removal from public office and up to five years in prison.
If Trump was worth what he said he was, he could easily have afforded the Buffalo Bills. He never even bid—but he did find the time to spread fake news before he dropped out.
The many scams executed by Donald and his family have now been exposed. It’s time for Congress, the IRS, and New York state to step up.
Trump has two standards on immigration. One is for the Trumps and their pals. It is soft and easy. The other is for everyone Trump dislikes, especially Mexicans and Muslims.