Nexus Of Trump's Tax Returns And Russian Money Will Remain Huge Story

The nexus between Donald Trump's connections to Russian money and his refusal to release his tax returns is going to be a "huuuuge" issue for the foreseeable future, as the Donald is wont to say. Yesterday, even President Obama fanned the flames when he commented on all the favorable press that Trump gets in Russia and then responded when asked if he believed Russia would try to influence the election, saying, "anything’s possible." Trump continually refuses to answer the very simple question of whether Trump or any of his businesses have outstanding loans with Russian individuals or Russian banks. His response so far has been to say that he has no business interests in Russia. But that is not the question being asked. Rather, the real question is whether Russia has business interests with Trump or his businesses. And he refuses to answer that. The fact that he isn't just flat out lying as he usually does but is merely dodging the questions make it even more curious. His son already admitted back in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets". He also flatly refuses to release his tax returns, a stance that was reiterated by his campaign manager Paul Manafort this morning, using the excuse that he is being audited by the IRS. But the IRS has said repeatedly that there is nothing about the audit process that prohibits Trump from releasing those returns.

Trump seems to have compounded his problems with a press conference earlier today where he once again refused to release his taxes because he is under audit and again dodged the question whether Russian money has interests in him or his businesses by saying "there's nothing in Russia" with respect to his businesses. He then encouraged Russian or any other foreign country to either hack Hillary Clinton's email and/or release any other emails of hers that they have already hacked. He once again refused to stand firm when asked if he would defend the Baltics if Russia attacked as the NATO treaty requires and he further went on to suggest that he would look at whether to recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

Needless to say, encouraging foreign governments to actively interfere in US elections is probably not a good idea. The Clinton campaign quickly responded with a statement saying, "This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent. That's not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue."

Trump has lived in the New York media market forever and he knows how to play the game about staying on the front page, even if it's bad press. The question is whether he thinks this tempest about Russian and his taxes will steal some press from the DNC convention or whether all this smoke indicates that there is a fire in there somewhere. Considering his refusal to release his taxes is a stance he took long before the convention and his simple refusal to answer the question about Russian investments in the Trump "empire", I have got to believe there is something there.

It will be interesting to see how the Republican establishment, especially the foreign policy establishment, reacts to this latest repudiation of the consensus US foreign policy. As far as Democrats go, they need to continually pound away on his refusal to release his taxes - they cannot let that issue pass.