BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI

& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, April 5, 2019

—Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo. Washington’s not the only place that leaks.

VERY INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE

President Trump intends to enlist the federal government in an illegal effort to conceal his tax returns from Congress and the public. We hope you didn’t faint from shock.

The Treasury Department is obligated by law (remember laws?) to provide six years of President Trump’s personal and business tax returns to Congress. But asked whether he would order the IRS commissioner to refuse to comply, Trump told reporters that the officials charged with responding to Congress will “speak to my lawyers and they'll speak to the attorney general."

The attorney general, William Barr, is the same person Trump appointed to make sure he faced no consequences for obstructing justice, and (as we’ve seen) to bury Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Whether Trump interferes with the Treasury Department or not, he has suggested that the Justice Department, through Barr, will intervene for him, in concert with his personal lawyers, who have predictably asked the Treasury Department to stiff Congress.

This is an abuse of power and a violation of the law. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal has officially requested six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns from the IRS. The law, which is clear as day, requires the IRS to provide those returns to the committee without exception. Should Trump’s DOJ intervene, it would be in violation of its obligation to enforce that law, for the sole purpose of helping Trump cover up whatever he’s afraid of the public finding in his tax returns ahead of the election.

And the IRS and Treasury Department leadership, stacked with Trump loyalists, will probably be thrilled to violate the law on Trump’s behalf. Trump personally pressured Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to prioritize confirming the IRS’s chief counsel—a man with ties to the Trump Organization—raising concerns that he sets governing priorities to protect his personal interests. (Again, please do not faint from shock.) Trump also selected an IRS commissioner who wrote an op-ed encouraging him to conceal his returns, and who owns a unit in a Hawaii-based Trump property.

For Neal’s part, the law does not require him to have a high-minded reason for seeking the returns, but it’s worth noting that he and other Democratic chairmen have spent months demonstrating that obtaining Trump’s tax returns is of critical importance for Congress and the country. They have obtained evidence that Trump has violated tax law, and committed mortgage and insurance fraud. They have legitimate suspicions that his business interests have left him compromised and serve as a conduit for—whaddaya call ‘em?—bribes. When the administration refuses to comply with Neal’s request, it won’t just be breaking the law. It will be breaking the law for the enlightened reason that the public doesn’t deserve to know if the president is a liar and a crook.

FBI Director Christopher Wray insists that white supremacy is a “persistent, pervasive threat” to America, contradicting President Trump’s routine comments downplaying the extent of white nationalism, and his administration’s implicit policy of ignoring its dangers.

It would be hard for Wray to pretend otherwise, though. Just this week, the FBI arrested a 22-year-old white supremacist who allegedly discussed carrying out a massacre similar to the one in Christchurch, New Zealand, for lying to the FBI about firearms he possessed. Last month the Justice Department arrested 18 members and associates of an Alaska-based white-supremacist gang for their “roles in a racketeering enterprise involving narcotics distribution, firearms trafficking, and acts of violence including murder, assault, and kidnapping.” And boosted by the rise in white nationalist groups, the number of active hate groups in the U.S. just hit a 20-year high.

At least someone in charge is willing to acknowledge it.

Theresa May has asked the European Union for a second Brexit extension—this time until June 30. If the E.U. countries don’t agree, the United Kingdom will be expelled from the union next week, with or without a plan to smooth the exit. What. A. Mess.

The 20 states that filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s use of an emergency declaration to circumvent Congress and build stretches of wall along the southern border have asked a judge to block the declaration while their case proceeds in court.

Joe Biden made two jokes about the women who have accused him of invading their personal space at an event Friday morning, before apologizing for not “understanding more,” but adding “I’m not sorry for anything that I have ever done.” Well handled, Uncle Joe.

Bernie Sanders promised a few weeks to release his tax returns on Tax Day, April 15, but has already backtracked. He wouldn’t release them in 2016, and he’s hedging on it now—what’s the deal, dude?  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent years insisting that his top security officials didn’t support the Iran nuclear deal, which they did in fact support even as their boss tried to sabotage the agreement. Today he admitted that, yeah, he was lying.

Boeing has admitted that a software failure was one cause of the recent deadly 737 Max crashes.

The Mormon church has reversed staunchly anti-gay policies that made same-sex marriage grounds for expulsion, and banned children of LGBT couples from baptisms and religious ceremonies until adulthood—and only if they renounced their parents’ “lifestyle.”

C’mon, the New York Times, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has never used the term “Jewish lobbies” or suggested that pro-Israel lobbyists are “Jewish” lobbyists.

Lil Nas X’s viral crossover hit “Old Town Road” debuted at No. 19 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart before Billboard took it off for being “insufficiently country.” So what’s a guy to do but get country superstar Billy Ray Cyrus to hop on the track for a remix?

The song, which Lil Nas X describes as “country trap,” has renewed a debate about race in country music, where white artists who bend the genre tend to go unchallenged by Billboard. The song’s rise to prominence through social media also bucked the genre’s established norms for new and emerging artists. “Only outlaws are outlawed,” Cyrus tweeted in support of the 19-year-old artist, before they released their collaboration.

Billboard has a chance to fuck this up a second time, but way more people will be watching now.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren publicly endorsed eliminating the filibuster in a speech before the National Action Network, citing its history as the tool racists have used for a century to delay progress on anti-lynching and other civil rights laws.

“When Democrats next have power, we should be bold,” she said. “We are done with two sets of rules, one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats. And that means when the Democrats have the White House again, if Mitch McConell tries to do what he did to President Obama, and put small-minded partisanship ahead of solving the massive problems in this country, then we should get rid of the filibuster.”

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