Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen said that the president should serve major jail time for tax evasion following an article published by The New York Times investigating more than two decades of Trump's tax returns.
Cohen, who has been disbarred from practicing law, did not hold back when commenting about The Times story, which alleged that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and frequently paid zero taxes in prior years.
"I also want to say in 2016 and 2017, while he paid $750, I paid in excess of $3 million in taxes to the IRS, and that's verifiable, too," Cohen said during a phone call with MSNBC.
"So if I went to jail for 36 months on tax evasion, which probably should have been tax omission, Donald Trump should do 360 years, based upon the numbers," Cohen added.
Cohen also tweeted on Sunday evening with a blurb from his new book, "Disloyal: A Memoir," in which the president allegedly boasted about how "stupid" the IRS was for giving him a tax refund.
According to Cohen’s book, the president showed his former lawyer a $10 million IRS refund check and said, “Can you believe how f**king stupid the IRS is? Who would give me a refund of 10-f**king-million-dollars? They are so stupid!”
Cohen also noted in the book that Trump was “almost certainly illegally” evading taxes at the time.
Trump on Sunday dismissed the Times story as “fake news,” but still refused to release his tax returns.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to release his tax returns once elected president. But soon after he was elected the president said people weren’t interested in his tax returns.
Now Trump is fighting fiercely in court to keep his returns secret and out of the hands of prosecutors and congressional investigators.
gothicwigga on September 28th, 2020 at 23:31 UTC »
I was just thinking about this. How can this country ever lock up anyone for fraud ever again without holding trump responsible? If trump doesnt get any time, how is that ok to keep going about your day and putting people in jail for the same thing? His entire family needs to be rounded up and charged or else our legal system will be one huge contradiction (inb4 it already is).
TerriblePigs on September 28th, 2020 at 22:01 UTC »
Just imagine all the people Trump would throw under the bus if meant getting a lenient sentence. He'd roll on everybody.
MTDreams123 on September 28th, 2020 at 21:30 UTC »
I think it's important to call it Tax Fraud. Evasion makes it sound the actions might have been legal (they weren't).*
Edit: *from a laymen's interpretation