Time for Joey to produce his tax returns
The Friday Letter / No. 527 / February 10, 2023
Updated at 4:23 p.m. ET with a report on rancher George Alan Kelly's arrest.To our readers: To see the latest version of this week's Friday Letter, updated and corrected as needed, and to read or post comments, click “open in app” or “online” which appear to the right and just above the headline. This will take you to my Substack website.
A precedent, albeit illegal, is now established
In a 2012 speech, the outgoing Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, claimed that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney hadn't paid federal income taxes for 10 years. In a now celebrated quote from 2015, “He didn't win, did he?” Reid said that lying about Romney's returns “was one of the best things I've ever done.” Media chatter at the time gave Reid credit for Romney's loss to Barack Obama.
Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code establishes criminal and civil penalties for anyone who discloses tax return information of an individual – even a taxpayer's name – without meeting one of the specified exceptions. Whether Reid had a defense because his claim was an outright lie is something a criminal trial might have sorted out. It never got that far. Reid was never sent to federal prison. He was never indicted.
We might trace the contemporary practice of using tax law as a weapon against political opponents of the ruling state to this incident. (Nixon tried and failed. Clinton had more success.)
Last November the Supreme Court, led by Trump political opponent Chief Justice Roberts, cleared the way for the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain President Trump's tax returns from 2015 to 2021, a period that includes his pre-presidency.
Although Section 6103 is muddy and subject to debate on interpretation like most government jargon, it does state with reasonable clarity that a congressional committee's only legitimate purpose in obtaining any individual's tax return is for “legislative purposes.” That is, to help the Congress make better laws for the country. The House Ways and Means Committee did not even come within a constellation's width of meeting that test.
Demands for Trump's tax returns under the guise of making better laws have all the sincerity of Google tracking your internet searches to improve its service. (That's why we use Bravo and Freespoke News.)
Under Article 1 of the Constitution, the House is a lawmaking body, not a police department. In fact, during Trump's term both the Justice and Treasury Departments rejected the Ways and Means Committee's requests for his returns on those grounds.
To say that Ways and Means, then run by Democrat Richard Neal of Massachusetts, was only pursuing its solemn duty to improve the nation's laws must complete with the claim that China was only trying to predict the weather for top billing on the laughability index.
As usual, state-controlled media were complicit in how they whipped up popular support for demanding Trump's returns. Politico said Trump “refused” to voluntarily release his returns, implying that he was legally required to because previous presidents had released theirs. He was under no such obligation until SCOTUS incorrectly ordered him to. If journalists chose their words carefully, they would say Trump declined to release his returns. When I was reporter 30 years ago, this was a well understand rule.
And so, we move on. Now that precedent is established, Ways and Means will be derelict if it doesn't demand Joe Biden's returns. Did he report the millions of dollars his Chinese masters paid him? If not, we have income tax evasion. As any tax accountant will attest, overstating expenses risks a fine. Under reporting income risks a trip to federal prison.
And while it's looking at Biden's returns, Ways and Means should consider the legality of its predecessors distributing Trump's returns to Politico and other leftwing media. Privacy of one's tax returns, once sacrosanct, is now no more important than our national borders. Yes, elections do have consequences.
Short takes on the news
American Greatness and several others
Leftwing crowdfunder GoFundMe has blocked fundraising for an Arizona cattle rancher who was arrested after he shot and killed a trespasser on his property, an illegal Mexican alien who had been deported several times. Even though Arizona law protects George Alan Kelly for defending his property, he was charged with first degree murder and is held under $1 million bail. Kelly, 73, pleaded with the judge to reduce his bail because his elderly wife is now left alone to run the ranch and defend herself. The judge, not identified in several press accounts, refused. A Christian crowdfunder, GiveSendGo, has taken up the cause and reportedly has raised nearly $200,000 thus far.
Breitbart
Great moments in American civics education. An anti-Second Amendment group called Newtown Action Alliance says Florida's proposed constitutional carry law allows something that doesn't exist: the right to carry a firearm.
“Just to be clear, there is no such thing as 'constitutional carry,'” the organization tweeted. “The constitution didn’t give anyone the right to carry guns publicly without permits, background checks, or training. This term was fabricated by the gun lobby to push for its any guns to anyone everywhere agenda.”
What these gun grabbers don't acknowledge is that rights come from God, not the government. The Bill of Rights doesn’t say what Mother Government might allow us to do. It says what government can't do. Here is something government can't do: block our ability to defend ourselves.
Breitbart
As the Defense Department crafts a plan to establish abortion clinics on military bases, Biden's team intends to declare an “abortion emergency,” Rep. Bob Good told Breitbart. The scheme is a response to the Supreme Court's handing back to the states their 10th Amendment right to write their own laws on abortion.
The Daily Record
Great moments in fed upness. The Democrat mayor and all four members of the East Hartford, N.J., township council have flown the coop and joined the GOP. “As the nastiness, rhetoric and social media vitriol of national politics continues to infiltrate local governance, we collectively determined that this was the best course of action to keep the focus on local issues impacting our community,” Mayor Joseph Pannullo said in a statement. He's been on the council since 2007.
The Daily Signal
The FBI rescinded its report on “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” in which it cited the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source. The Daily Signal calls SPLC “a leftwing smear factory infamous for branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations 'hate groups' and placing them on a map with Ku Klux Klan chapters.” Although its targets include organizations loosely affiliated with the Democrat Party such as the Nation of Islam and the KKK, it mostly attacks pro-Israel and Christian organizations such as the Family Research Council. Like Media Matters for America, a leftwing propaganda organ obsessed with Tucker Carlson, SPLC devotes much of its energy to spark fear of radio huckster Alex Jones and his Infowars radio program.
The New York Post
The school superintendent in Berkeley Township, N.J., said police weren’t called following the beating of a 14-year-old high school freshman girl because the four girls who attacked her would probably be punished at home and police involvement would amount to double jeopardy. The victim, 14-year-old freshman Adriana Kuch, had been bullied for some time, her father said. The school bureaucrat, Triantafillos Parlapanides, cited school policy in not calling for an ambulance but instead taking the girl to the school nurse, and for not calling the police. Three of the girls were charged with third-degree felony assault. Adriana committed suicide after a video of the beating was posted online.
Quote for today
“But here’s what matters: more than half the women in my cabinet, more than half the people, more than half the women in my administration are women.” – Joe Biden, in a speech
The other half would include Rachel Levine and Sam Britton. We aren't sure about Pete Buttigieg, except to point out that he took a two-month maternity leave while the nation’s transportation system collapsed
Headline of the week
From The Babylon Bee: “Lost Old Man Seen Yelling on Capitol Grounds”