Report reveals decades of his tax documents. The headline years of massive losses and tax avoidance, and remember, this is a president who ran for the highest office in the nation on his reputation and his record as a businessman, and these records show otherwise. Here are the takeaways. In ten out of 15 years, leading up to his run for office, the president reportedly paid no federal income tax in 2000, none. In both the year he won the presidency and first year in the white house, trump paid just 750, a tiny fraction of what the average american pays in federal taxes and in what could potentially create a massive conflict of interest for the president , the due date is reportedly coming up for hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, loans taken out by the president , that he personally guaranteed. The president is denying this report, although you may remember the 2016 debates, he proudly says it makes him smarter that he doesnt pay many taxes. All this is happening as we close in on the first president ial debate in this cycle. Lets begin with cnns kara scanell, who has been examining details of this story. Tell us more of the details of this, because the devil is in the details but gives a vision how aggressively the president took advantage of the tax code. Reporter yes, jim, thats right. Good morning. What we see im going to tick through a number of these items that we learned from this reporting of the New York Times examination of nearly 50 20 years of Donald Trumps taxes. He didnt pay taxes and in 2016 and 2017 he paid only 750 each year. We also learned from the New York Times the tax audit the reason why donald trump said he could not reveal his tax returns we learned more details that it involves a 72 million tax refund the president had taken one year, thats the thing that the irs is scrutinizing. Now, how did donald trump reduce his tax bill . The New York Times described he used over 300 million in losses from his golf courses to offset some 400 million in profits that he made from being on the apprentice and other licensing deals. He was also able to use consulting fees. He paid 26 million in consulting fees to lower his tax bill, including what the New York Times said an apparently 700,000 payment to his daughter ivanka trump while she was an employee of the trump organization. Now, they also reported that the president had used personal and business expenses to lower his tax bill, including 200,000 in landscaping and linens and silver at maralago as well as 70,000 that he had used on his haircuts and styling while he was on the apprentice. This comes as we know that the president s also under financial pressure. He has hundreds of millions of dollars of loans coming due in the next several years that puts him at a conflict of interest with the banks and could be forced to pressure the president while hes president if reelected into making these payments or foreclose on some of these properties. Jim . Poppy . Kara, i think the last point is so important about debts o d owed, given his position. Thanks for the reporting. Let as go to the white house. John harwood is there. Good morning, john. The president denied it quickly last night and called it fake news. I wonder what the white house is saying this morning is true about the president s tax returns. Well, the president did not engage in the specifics of the New York Times report. He issued that blanket denial as you said. He said the irs had treated him unfairly, even though of course thats the government that he leads, and he deflected by pointing to other taxes he had paid, state taxes in particular. This is consistent with the approach that alan garten, lawyer for the trump administration, took. He said in a statement over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions in personal taxes to the federal government, including since announcing his candidacy in 2015. Those personal faxes could include Social Security payroll taxes. Donald trump jr. On fox this morning offered a similar message but the larger question raised as you were just discussing with kara is whether or not the president s financial difficulty compromises the performance of his office. Is his attitude towards say erdogan, the leader of turkey influenced by the fact he gets revenue from turkey . Is his approach to the coronavirus influenced by the fact that his properties are hurting and need to be opened . Is the larger issue of whether or not hes going to exceed to a peaceful transfer of power, is he putting up so much resistance because he needs the presidency to stay afloat financially . He got this question from Hillary Clinton at the debate in 2016. He said it makes me smart not to pay taxes, but that takes on a lot greater urgency after four years of a Trump Presidency and you can bet, guys that, joe biden is going to raise this on the debate stage tomorrow night. No question, there are already campaign ads about it. John harwood, thanks very much. Joining us to discuss, someone who knows how taxes work, the tax law, former irs chief counsel attorney philip hackney. Thank you for taking the time this morning. Thanks for having me today. Lets get in this in a way i can understand and folks at home conditioned. Michael cohen, trumps lawyer and fixer for more than a decade he was asked specifically on the hill how trump reduced his tax bill. I want to play that and ask a question about it. Have a listen. To your knowledge, was the president interested in reducing his local real estate bills, tax bills . Yes. And how did he do that . What do you is you deflate the value of the asset, and then you put in a request to the Tax Department for a deduction. So you deflate the value of these assets and also claim losses. Thats legal. The question is, how far you go in doing so, right, and what you use to justify that. Based on your reading of this story, what exactly did the president do here . Yes, so it is kind of funny im thinking that what cohen is suggesting there is depreciation, deflating assets. It seems that year after year, President Trump has lost at his businesses, and if youre a business person, you can do that, right . You and i, we work for a living, get paid employment income. Its very hard to offset that money, but when your lifestyle in effect becomes your business, there are more opportunities potentially, but additionally, when you actually lose money, as they suggest has happened over the years and is reflected in the tax returns as reported by the New York Times, you can actually end up showing massive losses even though you have income. It really seems odd in comparison i suspect to his lifestyle, which seems to be exhibiting quite a bit of income, and yet he ends up having these massive losses after bad investments effectively. Good morning, fill. Were glad we have you here with us this morning to set this out in laymans terms. Why are federal taxes so important . What do they fund . They fund everything, right . They fund health care, they fund Social Security. They Fund Building roads. They fund administering our system, and our army, and we all pitch in to do that. To me, its a civic duty to put money into the system to ensure we have a wellrun system, and when you find out that there are wealthy individuals, and particular, it can be pretty galling to find out they paid zero over ten years and in the first two years in 2016 when he was running and 2017, he paid this exact amount of 750, i think most people pay more for their rent per month for that than he paid in taxes that year. The average u. S. Taxpayer pays more than 12,000 a year. Soldier salaries, the Weapons Systems the president repeatedly touts, et cetera. Theres a conflict here that strikes me as a layman, not as an expert. The president seems to have inflated the value of his assets to get loans, exaggerate the worth of his businesses to get loans, but deflate them, underplay to not pay taxes and even get more than 70 million refund which might strike folks at home as remarkable, given he only paid 750 in taxes. Can you play both sides of that game legally . So its impossible for us to know exactly what hes doing in these returns, and it is quite possible thats just been a massive loser. Its also quite possible thats been borrowing other peoples money in order to get deductions that werent really entitled to him. He additionally seems to be engaging in some deductions like his haircut, he deducted 70,000 apparently for haircuts and that gets into questionable deductions, right . Haircuts are pretty quintessentially according to the tax court nondeductible expenses that can be in some cases but he does get aggressive with some of the deductions at least from what we can see. You see a real issue with the consulting fees. Can you briefly explain that . Yes. So its not necessarily, hes not dead in the water from those things, but a 20 consultancy fee, large consultancy fees year after year suggest maybe some gamesmanship going on. His father played a lot of estate tax games according to the New York Times reporting that came out about a year ago. This is a useful way to shovel money to children and theres at least a suggestion in the New York Times reporting that perhaps this is whats going on. Some of the money is suggested went to ivanka trump, over 700,000, even though she was a chief executive officer of his company, getting consultancy fees, kind of a conflict of interest going on there, but possible it flies, but it does suggest problems. That was remarkable detail on the ivanka money the way they tracked that was the exact amount that the president claimed was claimed as income on ivanka trumps tax returns to the tune as you say of many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Philip hackney, thanks for helping walk us through this. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. You can bet that this topic might be on the table tomorrow in the first president ial debate tomorrow night in cleveland on the topics as well of the coronavirus, the economy, the supreme court, but now President Trumps taxes. Take a look at this online video from the biden camp. It is slamming the president s alleged 750 tax payment for the first two years when he was running and his first year in office. Watch this. Jessica dean is in cleveland of course where the debate will take place just hours from now tomorrow night. Joe biden clearly hearing a plan to go after the president on his taxes . Reporter yes, good morning to both of you. We can certainly expect to hear about this tomorrow, poppy and jim. We saw former Vice President biden the last couple of weeks really lean in to this scranton versus park avenue messaging. He went after White Working Class voters in the upper midwest and that is something theyve continued to come back to and this new reporting about President Trumps taxes really feeds right into that message. We heard from his Deputy Campaign manager on our air last night, indicate bkate beddingfi this is about President Trump looking out for himself, that Vice President joe biden is looking out for all americans and you saw that messaging in the video online from the Biden Campaign where they really lean in to what the average american is paying in taxes, and what donald trump is paying in taxes, really creating that stark contrast again that scranton joe is looking out for the everyday american, while donald trump, the message theyre trying to get across is looking out for himself, and his friends and billionaires and millionaires with his tax cuts. Now, in a more general sense, were expected to hear about that, but also the economy and the Covid Response. That is the issues weve been hearing from the Biden Campaign time and time again across the campaign trail, poppy and jim. We know that President Trump is going to go after Vice President biden. The campaign knows that. What they want to do, jim and poppy, is really draw it back time and time again to the Covid Response and the economic crisis, the Public Health crisis and the economic crisis that the country is facing. Jess, thank you. Its a big night ahead for sure tomorrow night. Well all be watching. We appreciate you being on the ground in cleveland. We have a lot ahead. It is a busy monday. How the Trump Campaign is responding to the New York Times reporting. Also this morning the cdc director says hes worried the president is getting misinformation from his new adviser on the Coronavirus Task force. Well have more reporting on that. Plus a former Intelligence Agency director who repeatedly briefed President Trump says that the president has failed to serve the countrys National Security interests. Hes met him face to face. Hes briefed him. Its remarkable point of view, hes going to join us live. My hygienist cleans with a round head, so does my oralb. My hygienist personalizes my cleaning, so does my oralb. My hygienist uses just the right pressure, and so does my oralb. Oralb combines a dentistinspired brush head with the gentle energy of microvibrations for the wow of a professional clean feel every day. My mouth says wow and so does my oralb. There is a major story just days before a major moment in this president ial election. So how is the Trump Campaign handling the New York Times report that the president avoided paying any federal income tax for years. Lets bring in our abby phill phillip. Good morning. Lay out what youre learning more, and i think as it ties to specifically blue collar voters, and if theyre going to care about this. Yes, good morning, jim and poppy. The Trump Campaign yesterday first responded to this by simply pointing to a statement that was already in the New York Times article suggesting as the president did yesterday at the white house that he is paid federal taxes and the story is inaccurate but theyre also suggesting this is exactly what the president experienced in 2016 in that race against Hillary Clinton. The implication being that voters are already familiar with these arguments that the president paid no taxes, and that perhaps this information isnt going to change their view, but as you can see from the way that the Biden Campaign is approaching this, they certainly believed your question about blue collar voters this is something that will matter to americans especially now at a time of so much economic uncertainty. The Biden Campaign is really focusing on the idea that the president has cheated and stiffed the american public, that he is not paying his fair share, and so it really falls directly into that argument, but other than that, its been notable that the Trump Campaign has not tried to attack the substance of this article really in any way. Theyre just simply saying its old news. Theres another issue beyond the president tax aviedance over men years and that is a massive loan in the hundreds of millions of dollars, guaranteed by the president himself, set to come due in the coming years. How significant is that . I mean, there are National Security folks who note that massive Loan Obligations like that are issues for you and me or would be with security clearances. What is the answer to what this means for the president Going Forward . Yes, if you are a regular person trying to get a job in the federal government, debts like this would be a significant problem. Its not clear as the president of the United States, those rules apply to him but it certainly raises questions about some concerns that have actually followed President Trump since he was a candidate. The question is who is this money owed to and what does it say about the potential problems that this could present for him in terms of conflicts, in terms of potential blackmail, if they are owed particularly to institutions that are overseas or even governments that are overseas. We simply dont know, and the times story doesnt get into any detail on that question, but this is one of the main things that i think the president has probably tried to keep from public view, not just because of what it says about the National Security risk but also what it says about how much money he is worth. You know that this is a president who really likes to brag about how wealthy and successful he is, but with more than 400 million in debts, it really calls into question how much of that is real and how much of that is inflated for, you know, pr purposes really. There is so much there, its a long read but really important one. Abby thank you for the reporting. To the coronavirus pandemic the director of the cdc is growing increasingly worried about misleading information he says is making its way to the president from a new member of the Coronavirus Task force. Well have details on that ahead. Go go go on a real vacation. Visit go rving. Com or your nearest rv dealer. Go go go on a real vacation. Alits just more information; have a dexcom because why wouldnt you want that . Being able to see your numbers