The release of Trump’s tax records show the former president had foreign bank accounts in China, Britain, Ireland and St. Maarten during his presidency and, during his first year in the White House, had paid more foreign taxes than in the United States.

The sheer complexity of the former property mogul’s business empire means it will take time to sift through the nearly 6,000 pages of figures in detail, but what is immediately clear is that he has actively pursued legal but creative accounting strategies to ensure that their federal tax contributions are kept as low as possible.

While Trump paid $641,931 in federal income tax in 2015, he only paid $750 in 2016 and 2017 and nothing in 2020.

He paid nearly $1 million in 2018 and $133,445 in 2019, but relative to his earnings, those amounts are small.

The Independent‘s Joe Sommerlad explains how he did it.

George Santos is expected to take office this week as the newly elected Republican congressman from New York, joining a new GOP majority in the House of Representatives.

But he will take office in the face of a wave of accusations that he fabricated much of his CV and filled his profile with false statements about his life and career. Questions about his work history, personal finances, allegations of fraud and whether he lied about his own mother’s death have continued to mount in recent weeks.

One such allegation includes a 2008 complaint that Mr Santos, then 19, stole a checkbook and was accused of making fraudulent purchases in Brazil.

The IndependentThe magazine’s Eric Garcia details some of the highlights of hundreds of pages of long-awaited tax documents involving the former president.

We learned that Trump made no charitable contributions in his final year as president despite his pledge, had offshore bank accounts while in office, and claimed taxable income or losses in China, Israel , in Canada and other foreign countries.

A statue of the late Congressman and prominent civil rights figure John Lewis will replace the space where a Confederate monument once stood in Georgia.

A 16-foot-tall statue will be erected in the Decatur congressional district, which Lewis represented for 17 terms. Previously, at this location, there was a Confederate obelisk that stood there for over 100 years, until it was removed in 2020.

In 2010, Trump’s eldest son started Titan Atlas Manufacturing, which provided molded panels for manufactured homes. But the company fell into deep debt in 2017. This prompted the former chairman to set up a company called DB Pace to take over.

The release of his tax returns shows the president suffered a $1 million loss to bail out his son’s beleaguered business.

A profile of the Republican rise in The New York Times newspaper reports third Republican Elise Stefanik has earned a reputation for her diligence ‘in promoting the party’s message’ and her ‘shameless transactional’ dealings to garner support as she navigates her way through the lower house of Congress .

But sources close to the former president said Time that any story that casts her as a “potential running mate [to Trump] they are considered clumsy plants by their own staff and inspire bewilderment and mockery.

“Trump liked her, they said, and he liked seeing her defend him. But even he didn’t trust her,” according to the report.

Time chronicles the rapid evolution of Stefanik, a staunch supporter of the former president, from a relatively moderate figure to a prominent figure on the far-right flank of the GOP with a self-proclaimed “ultra-MAGA” agenda, embracing electoral narrative fraud unsubstantiated Trump and embracing conspiracy theories that appeal to a reactionary base.

In a sworn affidavit to Housing Court in 2016, George Santos – who is due to take office this week – alleged he was assaulted while paying hundreds of dollars in back rent to his landlord in Queens during eviction proceedings. The New York Police Department has no record of such attacks.

The Republican wrote that he was “unable to provide a police report” and was ordered to return to the police a few days later to collect one, according to a sworn affidavit.

The report follows a long list of recently exposed fabrications and outright lies about his professional resume and life experiences, including false claims about his education, career, real estate portfolio and the death of his mother.

Adam Kinzinger has blamed Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for giving Donald Trump a political lifeline after the insurgency, opening the door to “crazy elements” in the future Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

“He’s the reason Donald Trump is still a factor,” Kinzinger told CNN on January 1. “He’s the reason some of the crazy elements of the House still exist.”

The Illinois congressman is among several House Republicans who voted to impeach the former president for fueling the assault on Congress to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, which Trump continues to oppose. falsely asserting that she was “stolen” and “rigged” against him.

Kinzinger said the GOP leader had the opportunity to speak ‘the truth’ after the attack, but instead visited the former president’s Florida compound at Mar-a-Lago weeks earlier. later, effectively “resurrecting” his political career from Trump.

Republican U.S. Representative Kevin Brady has said the release of Donald Trump’s tax returns from the years he led and held office set a “dangerous new precedent”.

“It reverses 50 years of protections for American taxpayers that began in the Watergate era,” he told Fox News on January 1.

The outgoing congressman, who will not return to office when Congress resumes this week, was a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which worked to obtain and release the former president’s much-awaited documents.

Brady said the committee’s work on the subject indicates its “almost unlimited power to target private citizens.”

“Every American should be afraid of this precedent because, like I said, the enemy list is back and you could very well end up on it,” he added, seeming to draw comparisons with ordinary citizens and a former president facing multiple federal issues. and state investigations for tax evasion, obstruction and conspiracy.