We reported late yesterday that the three most terrified individuals in America right now are the Trump kids, particularly Ivanka. Simply put, Donald Trump is 74 and has lived a “full” life, to say the least, and even in the best of circumstances won’t have “that long” to think about possible mistakes he made or the consequences of his actions. Trump’s children, on the other hand, now face a paradigm shift. Whereas they may have once counted upon a golden future and massive inheritance as their birthright, they must now face the very real fear that they’ll live decades with the opposite.

We even noted last night that Ivanka, particularly, faced real problems because her possible criminal exposure jumped off the pages of the New York Times from tax returns they already possessed.

According to tweets put out by Nick Ackerman a specialist in this area, despite the fact that the New York Times referred to Trump’s actions as “tax avoidance,” the article actually describes several instances of tax fraud involving both Trump and Ivanka.

Ex-Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman says the NYT’s report on Trump’s taxes shows that both he and his daughter, Ivanka could face legal liabilities. “The only thing saving him at this point is the Department of Justice’s guideline that says you can’t indict a sitting president.” pic.twitter.com/kOytMsQTgQ

— CNN (@CNN) September 29, 2020

Ackerman describes the difference between “avoidance” and tax fraud:

“Tax avoidance is simply taking the tax code and getting the most deductions you can get under the code that is perfectly legal. Tax fraud, however, is lying about what your income was, lying about what your deductions are, and there’s a couple of items that just stand out in that report from the New York Times that really appear to go beyond tax avoidance.”

Yeah, one is “sophisticated business planning” the other is a felony. Ivanka’s issue center around the fact that she was a shareholder/employee/member of the Trump Organization and yet also charged the organization “consulting fees” in her Vancouver project. The consulting fees allow the Trump Organization to decrease their stated income (it’s an expense) while keeping the money “in the family.” Meanwhile, Ivanka reported those consulting fees on her White House disclosure forms without naming the company from which they came.

That’s a problem. The move surely saved the Trump Organization and Ivanka well over six figures in money owed to the government, which instead stayed in their pockets. In reality, it ain’t all that different than holding up a bank and stealing over $100,000 in cash. By law, they were not entitled to that money and against the law, they kept it.

Obviously more facts will need to be flushed out. We presume people are innocent in this country and Ivanka will have a chance to … attempt to explain this. But paper crimes are hard to defend and on paper, at least, this looks real bad.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak