Is THIS Why the GOP Coddles Tax Cheats?

Nothing annoys voters, even Trump voters, more than rich jerks who don't pay their taxes. Yet the GOP is trying to de-fund Biden's crackdown on rich tax cheats like, well, Donald Trump.

The guy Republicans have all but formally nominated for president is a wicked tax cheat. Trump’s company was last year fined $1.6 million for committing tax fraud, and the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, Alan Weisselberg, served four months at Rikers for tax fraud (and may be headed back for another spell after pleading guilty to perjury on another matter). Trump himself was not prosecuted in connection with Weisselberg’s tax fraud, either because Donald Trump can’t be expected to know about all the chicanery in the company that bears his name (too much to keep track of!) or, more likely, because Weisselberg ain’t a guy who rats out his pals, see?

But it would not be surprising to see a tax-fraud indictment added to the four Trump indictments handed up already, judging from a letter issued by a special monitor in Trump’s civil bank-fraud case in New York, which he lost. The letter said that a $48 million loan Trump claimed to be paying off appears never to have existed. Assuming this letter is correct, a tax lawyer named Martin Label told the Daily Beast, "It would appear … that this amounts to tax evasion.” According to David Cay Johnston, writing in The Nation, Trump has gotten busted twice in the past for tax evasion.

Why do I bring this up? Because almost nothing pisses voters off—even Trump voters—than rich people who don’t pay their taxes. The Biden administration is stepping up its investigations of tax fraud committed by millionaires and the GOP keeps trying to de-fund it. Why? Mostly because the GOP is in the tank with rich tax cheats. But perhaps also, I suggest in my latest New Republic piece, because it’s in thrall to one tax cheat in particular. You can read the piece here.