photo credit: Evan El-Amin // Shutterstock

The New York Times has done their research once again. The magazine released an article that has social media and news outlets going crazy. According to them, President Donald Trump’s businesses lost a total of $1.17 billion between 1985 and 1994. It appears Trump lost more money than nearly any other individual US taxpayer year after year. Trump lost so much money that he avoided paying taxes for 8 of those 10 years.

New York Times did not obtain Trump’s tax returns from the stated years, but received the information from someone who had legal access to the returns. The Times then matched the information to figures in the public database of IRS information on top earners, where identifying details are removed. The Times used other public documents to confirm significant findings, and used confidential Trump family tax and financial records the newspaper had previously acquired.

The Times previously reported that Trump helped “his parents dodge taxes” in the 1990s, including “instances of outright fraud,” and that he and his siblings helped his parents hide millions of dollars in gifts in a “sham corporation.” At the age of 3, Trump started receiving at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire.

As for Trump’s tax returns from the past 6 years that the House of Ways and Means Committee asked for, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin formally denied their request as of Monday.

Trump also asserted executive privilege, one of the powers of the president, on Wednesday to further block Congress from being able to obtain the full version of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller’s report on the Russian investigation.

Last week Attorney General William P. Barr appeared in front of the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions regarding his summary of Mueller’s report, in which down played Mueller’s concerns about Trump’s obstruction of justice. Barr also refused to hand over the full report, leading Democrats to accuse him of stonewalling a request for material they need to continue their investigation of Trump’s obstruction of justice and his abuse of power.

The news came as the committee prepared to vote on Wednesday to recommend Barr be held in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for the report. The Justice Department requested the vote be postponed. They warned that if the vote was not rescheduled, Trump would use his powers to block them.

“This is to advise you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials,” a Justice Department official, Stephen E. Boyd, wrote Wednesday morning, referencing not only the Mueller report but the underlying evidence that House Democrats are seeking.