Trump news today: Giuliani and Lindell attend Trump’s New Year’s party, even though his own children miss it

Donald Trump did not donate anything to the Department of Health and Human Services during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite publicly claiming he did, his tax returns revealed on Friday.

The picture painted by the recently released documents is crystal clear: he declared no charitable donations in 2020, meaning his tax burden was not reduced at all (at least in that respect). He will still continue to pay $0 in gross income tax for the year.

If his figures are accurate, they would directly contradict a statement made by his chief White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, in March 2020.

Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House special committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, accused GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of giving Donald Trump a political lifeline after the riot, opening the door to “crazy elements” in the recent one to be controlled by the Republican House of Representatives.

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

The release of Trump’s tax documents shows that the former president had foreign bank accounts in China, the United Kingdom, Ireland and St. Maarten during his presidency and paid more foreign taxes than the U.S. in his first year in the White House.

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

While Mr Trump paid $641,931 in federal income tax in 2015, he paid just $750 in 2016 and 2017 and none in 2020.

He did pay almost $1 million in 2018 and $133,445 in 2019, but as a fraction of his earnings, these are small amounts.

The IndependentJoe Sommerlad of Joe Sommerlad explains how he did it.

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

But he will take office facing a wave of accusations that he fabricated most of his resume and filled his profile with false claims about his life and career. Questions about his work history, personal finances, fraud allegations and whether he lied about his own mother’s death have continued to pile up in recent weeks.

One of those charges included an allegation in 2008 that Mr. Santos, then 19, stole a checkbook and was accused of making fraudulent purchases in Brazil.

The IndependentEric Garcia breaks down some of the highlights from hundreds of pages of long-awaited tax documents involving the former president.

We’ve learned that Trump made no charitable donations in his last year as president despite his promise, had foreign bank accounts while in office, and claimed taxable income or losses in China, Israel, Canada and other foreign countries.

A statue of the late congressman and prominent civil rights activist John Lewis will replace where a Georgia Confederate monument once stood.

A 16-foot-tall statue will be erected in the Decatur congressional district that Lewis represented for 17 terms. The site was previously home to a Confederate obelisk that stood for more than 100 years until it was removed in 2020.

In 2010, Trump’s eldest son started Titan Atlas Manufacturing, which supplies cast panels for prefabricated homes. But the company fell deeply into debt by 2017. This prompted the former president to set up a company called DB Pace to take over.

The release of his tax returns show the president took a $1 million loss bailing out his son’s beleaguered venture.

Profile of the Rising Republican in the New York Times reports that the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, Elise Stefanik, has earned a reputation for her zeal “in pushing the party’s message” and her “shamelessly transactional” dealings to win support as she advances in the lower house of Congress.

But sources close to the former president said The times that any stories portraying her as a “potential candidate [to Trump] are regarded as unwieldy plants by her own team and inspire embarrassment and ridicule.’

“Trump liked her, they said, and he liked watching her defend him. But even he did not trust her,” according to the report.

The times chronicles the rapid evolution of Ms. Stefanik, a staunch supporter of the former president, from a relatively moderate to a prominent figure on the far-right wing of the Republican Party with a self-described “ultra-MAGA” agenda, embracing Mr. Trump’s baseless narrative of election fraud and embracing conspiracy theories that appeal on a reactionary basis.

In a 2016 housing court affidavit, George Santos — who is set to take office this week — claimed he was robbed on his way to pay hundreds of dollars in rent to his Queens landlord during an eviction case. New York City police have no reports of such an attack.

The Republican wrote that he was “unable to provide a police report” and was told to return to the police station a few days later to get one, according to an affidavit filed under oath.

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