Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid accused Donald Trump Tuesday of withholding his tax returns because “he’s not as rich as he wants us to believe” and running fraudulent business plans to prop up his finances.
“He was born with an inheritance but lost his daddy’s wealth,” the Nevada Democrat said Tuesday morning on the Senate floor. “That is why Donald Trump won’t release his tax returns… Trump is faking his net worth because he doesn’t want us to know that he’s not a good businessman, that he’s not as rich as he would have us believe.”
With that, Reid returned to the line of attack he made against Mitt Romney four years ago, when he accused the 2012 GOP nominee of failing to pay taxes. In that case, Romney had released two years of tax returns whereas Trump has released none. But the tax return attack this time was an act of table-setting for arguing that Trump is “not a good businessman” who has profited off fraudulent ventures.
“He doesn’t crack the list of major real estate players in New York City, let alone the country,” Reid said. “In lieu of real business sense, Trump resorts to scams like Trump University… Trump University is under investigation in the New York attorney general’s office. He’s the defendant in other class-action lawsuits. Why? Because he cheated people.”
Calling Trump a “flim-flammer,” Reid accused Trump of using his charity, the Trump Foundation, to run other scams. The minority leader cited reports that Trump used charity money to purchase a football helmet signed by Tim Tebow. And he accused Trump of using “other people’s money” to burnish his philanthropic reputation.
“In 2009, Trump asked the Charles Evans Foundation for a donation to his charity, to the Trump Foundation,” Reid said. “Donald Trump took that money and gave it to the Palm Beach Police Foundation … when the Palm Beach Police Foundation wanted to use Trump’s South Florida Resort to honor him for this gift that he gave —remember the gift was from somebody else, but he claimed credit for it — Trump charged them for the event.”
Republicans found an opportunity for an indirect rebuttal a few minutes later, after Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., gave a speech denouncing for-profit colleges for defrauding students.
“I just heard the senator refer to somebody signing something and this article to refers to [how] this for-profit college signed Bill Clinton to a lucrative deal as a consultant and honorary chancellor, paying him $17.6 million over five years,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said on the Senate floor.
Barrasso then tied that salary to the broader set of allegations that companies paid the Clintons personally for State Department favors. Barrasso read from a news report on how then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited Laureate International University, a for-profit college, to attend a State Department dinner because it was founded by a friend of Bill Clinton’s. Months later, the university gave the former president the $17.6 million contract.
“It’s very disturbing,” Barrasso said. “So when I hear another colleague from the Senate come to the floor and talk about for-profit colleges … it seems obvious to me that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, they had something to do with it as well.”
