Obtaining the first two pages of mr. Trumps taxes. He paid 38 million in taxes on more than 150 million in income. Giving him a tax rate of 25 . The move comes as theyre battling headlines on the gop bill and wiretapping claims. Prompting him to speculate whether the president himself or one of his staffers sent them anonymo anonymously. Do you think its possible . Donald has a long history of leaking information about himself. Dismissing the tax disclosure. I dont think we learned anything at all interesting tonight. This would be a mistake for democrats to get distracted by. His son suggesting it was a positive development for his father. 12 years ago donald trump made a lot of money and paid a lot in taxes. Scandal. This after President Trump insisted for months he could not release his tax returns because they are still under audit. Theyre under audit. Everyone says you dont release your returns until the audit is complete. When the audit is complete ill do it. Depends on the audit. Not a big deal. The president may have other reasons for keeping his taxes to himself. Interestingly enough trumps return showed he paid about 31 million of the 36. 5 million in income tax and its also something he vowed to eliminate and gives you some look into his thinking. He got the president s tax return in the mail anonymously sent to him. Promptly crashed the server there and hes also the author of the making of donald trump. So we have the reporting. We have the tax, and then we have the mist risk. So lets start with the repo reporting, how did you get this . It just came to my home. I got a phone call from one of my grown children that this came to my house and i went up to new york city. You dont know who sent it to you and you didnt ask anybody for it. Correct. But it had two very important words on it. Client copy. What does that tell you . First of all it didnt come from the Internal Revenue service which probably got it electronically. It probably came from someone given that copy either because they worked in the Accounting Firm or it was produced in litigation or it was produced for a regulatory proceeding and somebody had access to it. I think the reason they probably sent it to me is because i have written so much about negative incomes and how theyre used by healthy people. Do you think it was possible it was sent to you by the president . Yes, donald has a long history of leaking things. Doing it directly and indirectly. The anger suggested to me not likely. Its when something gets leaked hes happy about they dont complain. They did have their game together. When they found out this was coming out they put out a response that nailed exactly how to play this and they dont always do that. Actually they behaved pretty unethically. I sent them the document and they gave it out to competing news organizations. Professional pr people dont do stuff like that. Ive never had a white house do Something Like thancht join the club. So client copy takes the irs out of it and thats important right now because what we have seen is institutions keep getting attacked as part of a political tactic to deal with criticism of the president. Right. So client copy puts this into the realm again of unethical litigant. Somebody that got this through discovery and wasnt supposed to release it or someone connected to trump that would have had this. Thats how you got it. Now whats in it. As you said you do a lot of writing about the alternative minimum tax and whats going on. The trumps that year had 153 million in income. About 3 million a week. They also took 103 million of negative income and i believe thats from a tax shelt their the president bought. What is negative income . Its reverse numbers. Youre in the hole. So you lost money. Thats right. In trumps case he didnt have negative income. The banks took that loss but the president bought a tax shelter that allowed him to take it as well. Double taking the loss. Illegal. Congress, the republicans in congress shut that off the minute they learned about it but you know what they do, they let the people that already bought the tax shelter keep it. So this the president , we only have the regular tax system. We have two tax systems for wealthy people. Regular and amt. He would have paid 5 million on 153 million. Thats less than 3. 5 . Thats less than the tax rate paid by the poorest half of americans. So lets talk about why that matters. That matters because he wants to overhaul the tax code. A lot of folks want to overhaul it. He wants to get rid of something so instead of paying 36 and a Million Dollars he would have paid about 3. He would have paid 5. Thats right. He wants to live like a king and pay taxes like hes a pauper and we cant run our military and the fbi and the other things needed to make america a free and independent country without tax revenue. Theres a big debate about that. You cant blame trump for the existing system. He was just working the system as everybody else does that doesnt want to pay a penny more than they have to. Liberals and conservatives. Was there anything that went to Charitable Giving or schedules that shows foreign asset structure . No, we do know this was the one year out of the last 15 or so the president made a gift to his own charity. 660,000 but beyond that we dont know. Thats from the tax return of his charity which i also examined. So this was the right year to get in terms of trumps own interest, right . Thats part of the backlash here is that for a leak this seemed to be pretty good for the president. Yes it makes him look quite good and the numbers if im right about the tax shelter imply his average income was 81. 5 million a year. Half, roughly. So it was the best number to show how much money he makes. It doesnt show anything nepharious and he winds up looking like see whats the big deal. If we dont see his entire return for many years. Who would have client copy of a few pages. It could be a function of who had time to go to a photo copier. I dont know. Donald trump is unique in that he is not showing his tax returns. We had Hillary Clintons tax returns in the 1970s. This is the lead this morning because it is news but this is an intentional distraction. Well bring in our panel to talk about exactly that and more. Chris made important points there when you look at his income over a number of years and big losses . Do you see this as an intentional distraction regardless of who it came from . It may have the effect of being a distraction and selfserving. Its an incomplete picture and the picture that is presented is revealing of things that are consistent with what President Trump has said about his financial standing his wealth and his taxes he paid. We dont know the extent of his financial entanglement and involvement around the globe. The timing is curious. It is yet in the middle of all of the other things that the president wants to get away from. The wiretapping claims. The comey coming and finally giving word about the nature of the investigation of trump by that agency if there is one. The timing is pretty curious, no . I think if he intentionally did this the timing is shrewd. Not because of the huge divisions within the Republican Party and the battle over how to replace and repair obamacare but really on this russia stuff that if the person who sort of went to bed early on a snow night maybe on the east coast last night and can only Pay Attention to this in passing on the way to work didnt see davids interview last night they might see this and say it looks like he paid his taxes. Maybe they dont know that we dont know who he is getting his money from. At this point they look at this and they say maybe theres nothing to all of this stuff about him being beholden to russia and i think that is what serves this purpose if it was intentionally to anyone in trump world. What this does show us is this white house can and is willing to put out the president s tax information. It does show us that. This is a president that said he would show his tax returns when the audit is over. Never has. He can do it anyways. An ud it doesnt prevent you from doing that. The white house proves by putting out this statement. He hasnt even given us proof. Exactly. That they can put out tax returns when they want to. I just question the news value of this, right . Possibly the speculation this morning is maybe even it came from donald trump. This story was hyped so much by the media on social media last night. It comes out and its two pages. It makes donald trump look really good and i just wonder does it feed the appetite for more or does it pass identify people . People say we have seen the taxes. That comes to the nature of how you report it. But it speaks to the media. Lets just assume for a second that he is playing us. Well it wouldnt be the first time. He has played us like a violin and it could be lets go slow with saying that the president did it. Hold on a second. Let me deal with this from the perspective of the taxes. What do you want to say to people that say they have the big tax guy, this is the whole story and now we know he doesnt pay more taxes than he has to. Cant blame him for that. What do you want people to know about what remains to be known . Heres what we dont know. We dont know how much money donald trump is getting. He is a more than 30 year connections and notice trump always says russia and never says russians. Secondly who is he paying fees to . Its a huge Money Laundering bank and also borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from a communist chinese bank. Thats astonishing. We need to see Donald Trumps complete tax returns going back to 1977 which until now is the last year we knew he paid income taxes so we know who he is doing business with, who his partners are. Who he is getting money from. Who he is obligated to. Particularly the land sale he did in florida everybody said thats a pay off. This is the beginning. Absolutely. Its the beginning and its a window that i told you a lot about from the window but its just that its an airplane window. Thank you for the reporting. We appreciate it. Stick around. Coming up james comey will reveal in just a few hours whether or not the bureau is investigating these ties between the Trump Campaign and russia. Thats an answer that a democratic congressman said the fbi director said he will give today. This amid growing concerns about the Gop Health Care bill. More republicans now backing away. Good morning, the white house facing potential developments on multiple fronts including the president s attempts to repeal and replace balm care as well as his claims of wiretapping involving president obama. Its easy to see how its very difficult for this white house to change the subject once again in the midst of a challenging news cycle. Confronting internal revolt over the House Health Care bill and on going scrutiny of his claim that president Obama Wiretapped phones at trump tower. Americans need to know. Amid the turmoil james comey could confirm today whether the bureau is investigating ties between Trumps Campaign and russia. Leaders of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee also hopeful that comey will respond to their request to provide evidence regarding the wiretapping accusation. Theyre about to screw up big time if they keep running to the Intel Committee and not answer that letter. Earlier this week sean spicer qualified trumps accusation but now he is sounding defiant. He feels very confident that well ultimately vindicate him. Lawmakers showing growing frustration about the white houses failure to provide any evidence to support trumps extraordinary claim. I think frankly the administration probably should come forward with whatever proof they have because leveling a charge like that is a huge deal. You do not make those kind of allegations against a former president as he did so recklessly. This as they battle criticism over the trump enforced outcare plan estimating 24 million more americans will be uninsured under the gop replacement plan. Im a no. A firm no. I dont see how we get to 216. Im concerned. Thats not what President Trump promised. Thats not what republicans ran on. One top gop source admitting headlines are terrible. Lisa under pressure to support the replacement bill refusing to answer cnn. President trump silent over the report as the administration continues to discredit the cbos findings. The cbo report is full of erro errors. The president is proud of it. He is going on the road first to detroit for a job creation event there and then nashville tennessee for a rally. Theres a lot of spin going on. Some of it misleading and some of it false. Theres mounting opposition. Gop lawmakers want changes to be made. Many say i cant vote for a plan where millions may wind up uninsured. So will it be changed or will it not make it . Our panel debates, next. Im claudine and i quit smoking with chantix. Smokings a monkey on my back. It was, it was always controlling your time, your actions, your money. It had me. It had me. I would not be a nonsmoker today if it wasnt for chantix. Along with support, Chantix Varenicline is proven to help people quit smoking. Chantix reduced my urge to smoke some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. Some reported seizures or sleepwalking with chantix. If you have any of these, stop chantix and call your doctor right away. Tell your doctor about any history of Mental Health problems, which could get worse or of seizures. Dont take chantix if youve had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. 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If we dont get this through the goal of repealing obamacare and instituting a institution that would be patient centered its going to be unbelievably difficult. This is the vehicle to do that. This is the only shot thats a message to the white house. This is more and more republicans defecting after the cbo report estimated the Health Care Plan would lead tens of millions of americans uninsured over the next decade. Look to begin with you, this isnt just republicans in the house and the senate saying its a good start we want to make some changes. Saying things like senator tom cotton said yesterday calling it myth call legislation, listen. There is no first step. Thats mythical legislation in the future thats going to garner democratic support and help us get over 60 votes in the senate. If we had those democratic votes we would need three steps. Then you have senators that are more swing votes run agoway from reporters yesterday not wanting to answer what she is going to do. Well, no one wants to be the poster child for torpedoing this effort. Thats the message from the leadership is were going to have to bring a bill and it wont be perfect and you dont want to be the stand out hold out republican in the house or senate and the one or two that brings it down. Theres a lot of conflicting reporting going on and and its key to tax reform. And thats the reason and you have steve bannon strategist ahead of the caucus and maybe that Medicaid Expansion early next year instead of 2020. Thats a deal breaker and then you have the people that support the president and others in a post story saying he is really going to end up hurting his base who is dependent. Many of his voters in the rust belt that helped him win are dependent on a strong safety net. They need more. We dont know the direction the president is going in. Is he going to sue the moderates or the conservatives . And members of congress have no idea if hes in this fight or not. That was a strong round up of the entire field going on right now. Thank you. David what you are hearing is almost consensus is push back on spicer. Push back on ryan. This is misleading. This is false. This isnt our only shot. This is just the beginning. Theres equal push back on this phase 2 and phase 3. You heard it from reporters but you hear it more from the gop saying why are they saying it will be okay when they dont exist yet. How does that play in the ultimate analysis . The real problem here is this health care sefrt being defined by its earliest steps and that happened on obamacare as well. It made it very difficult for the Obama White House to get this out. There was all this talk of Communications P