What a loser. First, here’s an article about the lawsuit Trump brought against The New York Times, 3 reports, and his niece over the investigation into his tax returns. (Yeah, I know it’s hard to keep track of all this criminal’s lawsuits) Here was one of the original articles, from 2020 about Trump tax records
Among the key findings of The Times’s investigation:
- Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750.
- He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
- Many of his signature businesses, including his golf courses, report losing large amounts of money — losses that have helped him to lower his taxes.
- The financial pressure on him is increasing as hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he personally guaranteed are soon coming due.
- Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.
- Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.
- As president, he has received more money from foreign sources and U.S. interest groups than previously known. The records do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
Trump didn’t want people to see the above, so he sued the NY Times.
When Mr. Trump filed the lawsuit in 2021, he accused the paper and three of its reporters of conspiring in an “insidious plot” with his estranged niece, Mary L. Trump, to improperly obtain his confidential tax records for a series of stories published in 2018.
In a ruling filed on Wednesday afternoon, Justice Robert R. Reed of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan wrote that Mr. Trump’s claims against The Times and its reporters “fail as a matter of constitutional law.”
“Courts have long recognized that reporters are entitled to engage in legal and ordinary news-gathering activities without fear of tort liability — as these actions are at the very core of protected first amendment activity,” Justice Reed wrote.
