Case. And the chinese lady at maralago, it started as a joke, but now our intel folks, theyre not laughing. We have their reasons for concern. My friends, it is never boring. Tonight it matters. So lets get after it. So heres the big story, the New York Times reports some members of team mueller believe the attorney general failed to adequately characterize the findings of their inquiry that the stuff in the report is worse for this president than as summarized and the timing could not be better for the democrats. Theyre ready to send a subpoena for the full Mueller Report, and now the house ways and Means Committee, only one with this power, they can call for the president s taxes, they can call for anybodys taxes. Theyre asking for personal and professional taxes from the president from 2013 to 2018. Along with, like, eight of his business entities. So this is going to be a legal fight. It will certainly be a political fight. A general question is, is this about generating heat or light . We have the perfect guest for tonight. Congressman tom suozzi, democrat from the president s home state of new york. Welcome to prime time. Hey, chris. Thanks for having me on. Good to have you. So, first, the question of legitimacy. We all know well, i know what the statute says, that your committee is able to get this. Do you think there is any check on your authority . I think its very clear that the chairman of the committee has the power to make a request for anyones tax returns from the treasure secretary through the irs commissioner. And its just as simple as that . No pushback, no political tricks that can be done, not hanging you up in court forever . The language is pretty clear. It says shall, and shall deliver the. Of course, im sure if the president decides he wants to or his team decides they want to, theyre going to try to pursue some legal strategy. It may be in their best interests to move forward and get this put behind them. Is it a check on your authority if the president is under audit at the time . Well, this is a very interesting thing that i dont think anybodys been talking about. The chairman of the committee has said very clearly that the reason hes asking for these tax returns is because there is a policy in the Internal Revenue service that says very clearly that every president is supposed to be audited by the irs. And the question he wants to find out has have they done their job . Back in the carter administration, the irs put something in their manual that said we want to take the discretion away from the irs because we dont want to force irs employees to have to make a decision, should we or shouldnt we audit the president . And instead every president is supposed to be audited by the irs. So you get the can you do it. Do you have the right, then you have the is it right to do it. What are you hoping for politically comes out in these and what do you see as the risk . Im not really concerned about the political aspects. I think this is a policy issue that we have to do in the ways and Means Committee. One great thing about our chairman, richie neil, he said from the very beginning hes going to be very judicious and deliberate throughout this process. Hes going to following the rules, hes going to have hearings and hes going to make sure that whatever he does is going to be subject to scrutiny by people and it will hold up in a court of law, so hes been very, very careful throughout this process and hes made it very clear this is not about politics, this is about policy. This is a very narrow and targeted request. What happens is because weve never seen a president get put through this before. What happens if you get the taxes, there is nothing damning in the taxes that really matters in terms of what were asking. Could it backfire and make it look like youre beating up on the president for no good reason . Listen, the chips will fall where they may. This shouldnt be about politics. We have a job to do to actually look at policy and look at legislation. This is the job were supposed to do. Its a knifes edge, where we have to do our job but at the same time we have to coverage and we cant go too far that it looks partisan and we cant go too far the other way that we dont do our job to actually do the oversight were supposed to do. In this case, were doing oversight of the irs to find out if theyre complying with their requirement that they do an audit of the president without fear or favor. While i have you, congressman, what does the New York Times report mean to you, that some i just want to be careful about it. Some of muellers team are saying that they dont believe the a. G. s summary did justice to their findings, but they wouldnt tell the New York Times which findings they were talking about. I think what does that mean to you . It means to me that this is going to keep going on and on and on unnecessarily because if the president or if the attorney general, i should say, were to simply release the report, this would be over as far as a conversation. Lets get the report out there. Lets get it out. You want to redact things because you believe its proper to redact certain things . We understand that you have a duty to do, but lets just release the report. Thats what the public wants and the country needs to move forward. But the a. G. Says that is what hes doing. Hes just saying you guys only gave him a couple of weeks. It takes time. Well, the mueller team did summaries of their entire investigation and i dont believe its going to take the weeks that hes saying to get this out there. You know that theyre focused on this 24 hours a day. You know this is a very important part of what theyre working on right now and i dont believe its going to take shouldnt take weeks for them to get this report out. One of the questions that you guys will have to deal with politically is, you know, nowhere in the guidelines does it say that the a. G. Should answer a and if the special counsel cant. I dont know why mueller and his team didnt answer the obstruction question. That was his job. I thought he was in there because he was tough enough to make the tough calls. They didnt make a call on obstruction. The a. G. Stepped in with the deputy a. G. And made it. Thats not in the guidelines. Is that an issue for you guys . I cant really comment on that because i dont know what the report says or the findings say. I have Great Respect for mueller. I think most people in america do. As mr. Barr said, hes a straight shooter. Listen, the public just really wants to have the information. And we have to be very careful about all this stuff because i understand when people say youre getting too partisan. We have to try to be balanced, as i said earlier. Do our job as the equal branch of government to do oversight of the executive branch without going too far that its partisan. Thats a knifes edge that we have to balance on constantly. I think it was very helpful, for example, when Speaker Pelosi said i dont think impeachment is a good idea. That was before the Mueller Report came out. We need to be judicious and deliberate. I think the ways and Means Committee is doing that related to the tax rushes of the president and i hope thats what happens with muellers report as well. This is going to be tough with the taxes because youre going to get a fight and then there is going to be an expectation set. It will be a tricky balance. Well see how it plays out. Congressman suozzi, great to have you on the show. Hope to see you again. Thanks, chris. Be well. So my next guest is confident that congress will be able to get what its looking for. The question becomes what are they looking for . Just the taxes or something in them. The reason hes a good guest is he was once able to return the president s tax return of 2005. He knows whats at stake for the president and well be talking to him about that and what the attorney general he has to worry about next as well. Welcome to fowler, indiana. One of the windiest places in america. And home to three bp wind farms. In the offchance the wind ever stops blowing here. The lights can keep on shining. Thanks to our natural gas. A smart partner to renewable energy. Its always ready when needed. Or. Not. At bp, we see possibilities everywhere. To help the world keep advancing. Life isnt a straight line. Things happen. And sometimes you can find yourself heading in a new direction. 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Pay it plan it is a payment feature from american express. Choose a monthly plan to split up large purchases over time with no interest and a fixed fee. Need me to help you carry this to your car or. The powerful backing of american express. Dont live life without it. House democrats are now requesting to see President Trumps personal tax returns from 2013 to 2018. They also want his business tax returns. When asked about the sixyear request, the president feigned surprise that the democrats only want a few years. Listen to this. The chairman of the democratic ways and Means Committee asked months ago for the irs for six years of your tax returns. Is that all . Thats all. Oh, usually its ten, so i guess theyre giving up. Ive been under audit for many years because the numbers are big and i guess when you have a name you youre audited. The president told me on television after a debate that he thinks he gets audited all the time because he is such a devout christian. Okay. So lets put all the trappings of this aside and figure out whats going to really happen here. Especially this context of our other breaking story, about the disclosure that is being demanded now of mueller. This kind of all works together if you think about it, especially with some of muellers team coming out and saying the a. G. Did not tell you everything you needed to hear. So lets bring in someone who understands all this very well. David cay johnston once got access to stop of Donald Trumps 2005 tax return. Welcome to prime time. Always good to see you, brother. Good to see you. All right. So lets start with the will they. Do you think there is any way that the president can block the chairman of the ways and Means Committees request . No. Under a 1924 anticorruption law, the chairman of the ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance committee or the employee of congress who is the chief of staff for the joint committee on taxation all have a right to see this. The law says the treasury secretary shall produce not just the tax return but any tax return information. That means if they have copies of the books and records of Donald Trumps companies, transaction records, audit notes, audit notices, many other things, and i suspect, by the way, this will also eventually get into any gift tabs returns donald trump may have filed. Now lets get into why they want it, what he should be concerned about. This is an interesting take from his former personal attorney michael cohen. Now i dont know that cohen ever saw the president s taxes or had anything to do with their preparation, but here was his take before congress about why the president didnt want them out. Statements that he had said to me is that what he didnt want was to have an entire group of think tanks that are tax experts run through his tax return and start ripping it to pieces and then hell end up in an audit and hell ultimately have tax taxable consequences, penalties and so on. Do you think thats what it is . I think thats exactly what it is. Keep in mind, donald trump has had two income tax fraud trials, the state of new york and the city of new york. He lost both of them and the opinions written by the judges excoriated him. His own witness, his then tax lawyer and accountant who represented donalds father, fred trump, testified against him. He was shown the tax return and he said thats my signature on the tax return, but neither i nor my firm prepared that tax return, which is a pretty strong badge of fraud. Now, lets look at the other side of the balance here. If the democrats do this, this is an unusual move. Its a power play. We havent seen it done to other president s. Now, the pushback will be they usually put out tax returns, that this president didnt, but isnt the bar going to be kind of high for them . That these tax returns better show something other than he didnt pay enough in taxes . Well, if the if the democrats find there is nothing there and come out and say, hey, guess what . Donald trumps clean as a whistle, i would expect the republicans would jump up and down with joy who decided to back donald trump. The issue here is really about oversight and preventing corruption. And what the tax returns will tell us are things like did trump overvalue and undervalue things to game the system . Did he take deductions as he did in the cases where he was tried for which there was no substantiation or basis . And did he have money flowing to him in ways that suggest that he may be in violation of american law or subject to some kind of pressure or blackmail from people overseas . You know, we just had tom suozzi on, hes on the committee. He said there is a law that the irs ought to audit every president. Its a clever answer. We know what this is about. We know what this will be perceived as being about. If you really think thats what the American People want. I thought the suspicion was if you watch other tv shows on at this time if you follow his money, david, youre going to find out hes compromised. If they dont find that in his taxes, i dont think that youre lending history. Isnt there going to be a threshold if this isnt met, this is bad for the left . It could well be bad for the democrats if they mishandle it. I think thats why richie neil has been careful about couching it the way he has. They dont get to put the returns automatically out in the public record. It says theyll be received for closeddoor sessions, but i do think as in the case of Richard Nixon we need to know whether our president is a crook. Right. I hear you on that. Its going to be an interesting political test. People will say this is all from the past. Hes been weighed and measured. Let me ask you Something Else. The New York Times headline. We knew this was going to happen. Some of muellers team is saying, hey, he didnt get it right. Where do you think this takes us in terms of how much comes out . Well, you know, william sapphire wrote a column about barr when he was attorney general for george h. W. Bush called the patsy prosecutor and how he did something just like he did here. He distorted facts and tried to do everything he could to protect the president. Weve seen the other independent counsel and special counsel reports with very minor redactions in only a few of them. Why are we not seeing the report . There must be a reason theyre withholding the report and im not surprised some of muellers team are ready to talk to reporters and say whatever you read, thats really not whats going on here. We need to see the report and we need to ask a fundamental question, if it exonerates you, why dont you want us to see every word of it . Look, thats a fair point. If the president wants closure, clarity brings closure, and barr did do something that arent in the guidelines. He says its all about guidelines. Got to hue to the law. Doesnt say that he takes the decision from the special counsel when the special counsel cant make a call. You know, you would think that would default to congress, but the a. G. Took the step with the deputy a. G. To make a call on obstruction. Thats not in the guidelines either. No, its not. And, chris, if you very carefully parse the letter, which is, you know, what lawyers and people who teach law like i do do, there are a lot of missing phrases. It refers to the russian government. The russian government operates through oligarchs in many cases. There is other language that suggests this was a very artfully written letter. Look, hes a sophisticated guy. We know that the president put him in didnt put him in there to be his enemy. There is a little precedent, by the way. The only other time weve had a special counsel since they rewrote the rules or wrote the rules for the special counsel, that was janet reno. She actually directed the special counsel in that case, release it right to the public. There were redactions but it only wound up being a dozen or so pages out of 200. That went right to the people. That could have been done here, same set of guidelines, didnt happen. So there you have it. Absolutely. David cay johnston, i call on you early and often because you make it better for my audience every time youre on. Thank you for helping us understand these things. All right. All right. So were seeing some video for the first time from former Vice President joe biden on the controversy that is surrounding him before hes even said whether hes running. So were going to show you the message and then were going to debate. Is this enough to deal with these allegations of what is termed unwanted touching . Thats where we start. Where we finish, no one knows. clients voice remember that degree you got in taxation . danny of course you dont because you didnt your job isnt doing hard work. 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