The
Original Editor’s Note Updated Sept. 28, 2020
An Editor’s Note on the Trump Tax Investigation
The New York Times has examined decades of President
Trump’s financial records, assembling the most comprehensive picture yet of his
business dealings.
Dean Baquet
By Dean
Baquet
Published
Sept. 27, 2020
Updated
Sept. 28, 2020
Today we
are publishing the results of an examination of decades of personal and
corporate tax records for President Trump and his businesses in the United
States and abroad. The records stretch from his days as a high-profile New York
real estate investor through the beginning of his time in the White House.
A team of
New York Times reporters has pored over this information to assemble the most
comprehensive picture of the president’s finances and business dealings to date,
and we will continue our reporting and publish additional articles about our
findings in the weeks ahead. We are not making the records themselves public
because we do not want to jeopardize our sources, who have taken enormous
personal risks to help inform the public.
We are
publishing this report because we believe citizens should understand as much as
possible about their leaders and representatives — their priorities, their
experiences and also their finances. Every president since the mid-1970s has
made his tax information public. The tradition ensures that an official with
the power to shake markets and change policy does not seek to benefit
financially from his actions.
Mr. Trump,
one of the wealthiest presidents in the nation’s history, has broken with that
practice. As a candidate and as president, Mr. Trump has said he wanted to make
his tax returns public, but he has never done so. In fact, he has fought
relentlessly to hide them from public view and has falsely asserted that he
could not release them because he was being audited by the Internal Revenue
Service. More recently, Mr. Trump and the Justice Department have fought
subpoenas from congressional and New York State investigators seeking his taxes
and other financial records.
Our latest
findings build on our previous reporting about the president’s finances. The
records show a significant gap between what Mr. Trump has said to the public
and what he has disclosed to federal tax authorities over many years. They also
underscore why citizens would want to know about their president’s finances:
Mr. Trump’s businesses appear to have benefited from his position, and his
far-flung holdings have created potential conflicts between his own financial
interests and the nation’s diplomatic interests.
The
reporters who examined these records have been covering the president’s
finances and taxes for almost four years. Their work on this and other projects
was guided by Paul Fishleder, a senior investigative editor, and Matthew Purdy,
a deputy managing editor who oversees investigations and special projects at
The Times.
Some will
raise questions about publishing the president’s personal tax information. But
the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment allows the
press to publish newsworthy information that was legally obtained by reporters
even when those in power fight to keep it hidden. That powerful principle of
the First Amendment applies here.
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