Trump news today: Trump tax returns reveal web of losses, write-offs, ‘disguised gifts’ and little charity

The Independent’s Eric Garcia is keeping a running list of everything we discover from the six years of federal tax returns released on Friday.

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

While Donald Trump’s tax returns have been an issue since he put himself forward as a potential Republican candidate in 2015, the issue was still front and center when he stood for re-election in 2020.

A Democratic-controlled House of Representatives committee has published six years of President Donald Trump’s tax returns in an extraordinary move days before Republicans take control of the chamber.

The House Ways and Means Committee made public redacted versions of Mr Trump’s business and personal tax returns for the years 2015 – when he announced his candidacy for the presidency in the 2016 election – through to 2020, the last full year of his term.

Andrew Feinberg reports from Washington, DC.

A trove of deposition transcripts were made available by the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot, including statements coming from Ms Farah Griffin.

Graig Graziosi has the story.

In an interview with the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, a transcript of which was released on Friday, Ms Thomas said that she “wasn’t very deep” in her knowledge of specific voter fraud allegations at the time of her lobbying effort, but instead “was basing what I believed off of people I trusted and news that I trusted.”

Richard Hall reports on her testimony.

It took five hours for a White House aide to convince then-president Donald Trump to walk back his infamous tweet calling for looters to be shot during racial justice protests, according to dramatic January 6 interview transcripts.

Rachel Sharp has the story.

Donald Trump’s business empire relies heavily on public image and societal whims — and the cost of bucking those trends was evident in the second year of his presidency, writes John Bowden.

Virginia Thomas, the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says she regrets sending texts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election, telling the House Jan. 6 committee that “I would take them all back if I could today.”

Donald Trump had foreign bank accounts in China, the UK, Ireland and St Maarten during his presidency, and in his first year in the White House paid more foreign tax than US, his returns have shown.

In 2017, Trump’s foreign financial interests were still apparently quite strong; he paid more than $1m in tax to other countries that year. But at the same time, his domestic efforts to shield himself from taxes were in full swing too, and he paid less than $1,000 for the year in federal income taxes.

John Bowden has the details.