he knows the law is a clear and simple thing here, he just has to press that point until some court compels the trump administration to follow the law. that s how he s pursuing it. how do you try to win this fight if you re the other side, if you re the trump white house and you will do anything to stop the president s tax returns from being released, law or no law? well, that is what we re now seeing reported out tonight. as you know, in the two-plus years that he s been in office president trump has not been the most diligent chief executive when it comes to actually hiring people to important jobs in the federal government. right? when it comes to actually filling out senior jobs in the administration. he hasn t bothered, you know, to make sure all the jobs are filled. look at the cabinet right now. it s like half acting secretaries or something. he doesn t care. but he has taken particular care to install his own handpicked leadership at the top of the irs. and incidentally at the
yesterday we got this report in the times, the new york times, that deutsche bank anti-money laundering staff had reported multiple instances of suspicious activity in accounts associated with the president and jared kushner. but the times says the bank didn t submit those suspicious activity reports to the government, they essentially sat on them despite their own employees throwing these red flags. you re the top democrat on the banking committee. i saw you today asking treasury officials about this. it made me just wonder if this was was this news to you? had you known about any of this before? does this seem like an important development to you? well, we didn t know it because apparently the powers that be at deutsche bank didn t file anything, which they should have done if the times reports are correct. what we do know, though, is trump regulators, the trump financial regulators all across the board from the federal reserve and occ and fdic and all the trump pro-wa
everybody knows that a presidential candidate has to release his tax returns. but this random tax lawyer in southern california published this op-ed in forbes saying, well, he didn t think trump should release his tax returns. and wouldn t you know it, donald trump gets elected and donald trump picks that guy out of everybody to be the new commissioner of the irs. i wonder why. this is the point where i should also mention that same guy also happens to own some nice trump condos. he owns multiple trump properties as rental units at the waikiki trump international hotel and tower in hawaii. while serving as trump s irs commissioner. right? how did he get the job? he publicly opined during the campaign that trump shouldn t have to show his tax returns. yeah, i wonder how he got the irs commissioner job. that s the number one guy at the irs under trump. who s the number two guy at the irs under trump? the number two job at the irs is chief counsel, top lawyer at the agency. the new yor
stopped them from lifting those sanctions, but mcconnell is the one. he was the decider who in fact tilted the balance on this himself? well, i think in the house. i don t know for sure. but in the house tlookd like because it was going to be such an overwhelming vote more and more republicans thought it looked good to vote that way. in the senate, when trump and mcconnell are on the same side and when trump is protecting mcconnell and mcconnell is protecting trump, which looks to be both ways here, a lot of most of the republicans went with him. and i was floor leader, if i recall, on this, one of i think because it came out, it was our committee and the banking committee. and we saw what happened in the house. we knew we were in trouble in the senate because mcconnell weighed in like this and then other things began to happen. but whether it was our deutsche bank hearing today or whether it s rusal investing in the u.s. and the u.s. lifting sanctions, the u.s. treasury departme
well, after the sanctions were put on deripaska there followed a robust and very expensive campaign by lobbyists for deripaska. deripaska got what he paid for in that lobbying campaign. the treasury department soon announced that actually, second thoughts, they were going to lift the sanctions on deripaska s company. they were going to lift the sanctions on rusal. and then something kind of remarkable happened. a big bipartisan majority in the house of representatives said, actually, no. the u.s. government should not lift those sanctions. are you kidding? oleg deripaska was sanctioned for a reason, for a good reason. why is the trump treasury department lifting those sanctions? it wasn t just democrats in the house, it was 70% of republicans in the house who voted with democrats to block the trump administration from getting rid of those sanctions on deripaska s aluminum company. so big bipartisan vote in the house to tell the trump administration, no, don t lift those sanctions. thos