Major news outlet thinks Robert Mueller has Donald Trump’s tax returns. Here’s what comes next.
We’ve all heard the whispers that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may already have Donald Trump’s tax returns and that, logically speaking, he may have pulled those returns the minute he was appointed. Now a major news outlet is saying that it thinks Mueller already has Trump’s tax returns. If this is indeed the case, here’s what comes next as a result.
U.S. News & World Report has posted an article explaining why Mueller’s latest moves mean he likely already has Trump’s tax returns. It even goes so far as to say that people familiar with these kinds of investigations believe it’s a “near certainty” that Mueller has them (link). So what comes next? Keep in mind that as far as anyone knows, Trump’s audits over the years have always come up clean. That means there’s nothing in them that blatantly points to criminal activity, even under routine scrutiny. In turn, that means Mueller has to dig deeper to figure out where Trump has buried the skeletons within his finances, and what specifically he’s been hiding.
If anything, Trump’s tax returns serve as a roadmap, spelling out everyone Trump has done business with – or at the least, the front companies that Trump has used to try to cover up his shady business dealings over the years. Mueller’s investigators can use this as a starting point for getting to the bottom of whatever it is that has made Trump so afraid of anyone ever seeing his returns. In short, these returns should point to Trump’s litany of financial crimes.
If Donald Trump has been indirectly taking money from the Kremlin, as has long been widely suspected, that money trail will have to be accounted for somewhere in his filings. If Trump has done business with people he knew to be criminals, that will be traceable as well – and those criminals can then be squeezed to flip on him. If Mueller has had Trump’s returns from the start, as some believe, then by now he’s likely quite far down the path of uncovering Trump’s financial demons.
