Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he had no knowledge that his long-time friend and billionaire Michael Milken would benefit from a tax break his agency approved last year for a property in Nevada.
Mnuchin’s role in awarding tax incentives for investing in low-income areas has come under scrutiny after the New York Times reported on Saturday that he intervened in a way that helped Milken. Mnuchin said he didn’t seek to specifically assist the former financier, and that the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service process to designate so-called opportunity zones was fair to all states that applied.
“I was very involved in this case, but I had no knowledge of Milken’s investments, nor did I speak to him about it,” Mnuchin said Tuesday in an interview in Tel Aviv, where he was meeting with Israeli officials. “Our role in this part of opportunity zones is really a technical one as it relates to the designations.”
The opportunity zone initiative was created as part of the 2017 Republican tax overhaul. The designation means investors can claim tax breaks for putting capital gains income into real-estate developments in distressed areas. New investments in opportunity zones can grow tax-free if investors hold them for at least a decade.
The program has been criticized as a windfall for wealthy investors, including people associated with President Donald Trump, and many opportunity zone projects financed so far are located in areas that aren’t poor.
Treasury and IRS career officials were concerned in mid-2018 when Mnuchin’s team reversed a ruling on guidelines for investments in opportunity zones, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The change meant that Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, who had spoken to Mnuchin, won an opportunity zone designation for a property that previously was disallowed because it was in an area where incomes were too high.
Career staff at the agencies found the shift unfair to states that had already completed their selection process with the Treasury Department, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The officials weren’t aware of Milken’s involvement, or of the nature of Mnuchin’s intervention, and they didn’t think any laws were broken, the person said.
A company in which President Trump’s brother has a financial stake received a $33 million contract from the U.S. Marshals Service earlier this year, an award that has drawn protests from two other bidders, one of which has filed a complaint alleging possible favoritism in the bidding process.
The lucrative government contract, to provide security for federal courthouses and cellblocks, went to CertiPath, a Reston, Va.-based company that since 2013 has been owned in part by a firm linked to Robert S. Trump, the president’s younger brother.
After the contract was awarded, an anonymous rival bidder filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general alleging that CertiPath had failed to disclose that “one of the President’s closest living relatives stood to benefit financially from the transaction,” according to a copy of the July 22 complaint letter obtained by The Washington Post.
“The circumstances of this contract award, and what appear to be CertiPath’s efforts to obscure Mr. Robert Trump’s financial interest in the company even as it trades on the Trump name, present the appearance of preferential treatment for those who are close to the President,” said the complaint, which was sent by the Washington law firm Venable on behalf of the client.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Wow! Yet another clearly impeachable offense committed right out in the open for all to see! This reinforces my conclusion that Trump and his administration has the notion that no amount of corruption is truly illegal, just as long as no attempt is made to conceal it. The title of Jr.'s book is also a classic case of projection.
by the way, Doc, I love your tag line:
Honest conflict has more social value than dishonest harmony. People must be in conflict in good faith in order to wrest the truth from a stingy universe.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, was pressed by an investigator for House Democrats on why he repeatedly scheduled meetings at President Trump's hotel in Washington, D.C., with other figures now at the center of the impeachment investigation, a transcript of Volker's deposition released Tuesday shows.
The former Trump administration official was asked early last month about meetings at the president's hotel in downtown D.C., including a July 19 breakfast with Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer who was leading efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to open investigations sought by Trump.
While the impeachment inquiry is focused on whether Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine to pressure its government to open investigations into his political opponents, the transcript of the Oct. 3 deposition shows Democrats' interest in also probing ties to his personal businesses.
Democrats have long claimed that Trump has violated the Constitution's Emoluments Clause by profiting from officials spending money at his properties, and some have suggested Trump's alleged violations could be another article of impeachment.
Republican operative Roger Stone lied to a congressional panel probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after he helped his “longtime friend” Donald Trump win the presidency, a lawyer for the U.S. said as Stone’s criminal trial opened in Washington.
Stone lied “because the truth looked bad,” prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky told a federal jury on Wednesday. “The truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth looked bad for Donald Trump.”
Steve Bannon, who with Paul Manafort led the Trump campaign for a time, will be among the government’s witnesses, Zelinsky told the panel. Stone messaged Bannon during the campaign to tell him time was running out and that he knew how to win, Zelinsky told the jurors. “But it ain’t pretty,” Zelinsky said Stone told Bannon.
Stone is on trial for lying to the House Intelligence Committee about his communications with WikiLeaks while it published thousands of documents the U.S. believes Russia stole from Democratic Party computers to tip the election away from Hillary Clinton.
The 67-year-old Stone is also charged with obstructing the committee’s probe and threatening a witness, radio host Randy Credico, to prevent him from contradicting his story. He was indicted in January, the last man charged in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Evidence that Trump was using his charity as a tax scheme / piggy bank was a known thing during the 2016 election, but was dwarfed in coverage compared to "Omg! Clinton Foundation!" stories.
The sleazy New York Democrats, and their now disgraced (and run out of town) A.G. Eric Schneiderman, are doing everything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000. I won’t settle this case!...
He settled.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
