Former President Donald Trump always seems able to bounce back from a scandal, but will he still be able to pull a rabbit out of his hat during an attack by the US taxman? This is the question that experts are asking.
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“It’s an extraordinarily powerful weapon and the example I often think of is Al Capone. Mr. Capone didn’t go to jail because he killed people. He went to jail because he didn’t pay his income. You see that the arm of the tax authorities is long and very powerful, ”says Guillaume Lavoie, specialist in American news.
A few days ago, the financial group that represented former President Trump decided to drop him because, according to them, the information they received from the businessman was not reliable.
“You want a mortgage of a million, you say your house is worth 15, it’s not very worrying for your banker. But if your house is worth $150,000, well, you’ve screwed up your banker a bit. So the accounting firm says you can’t rely on all the values of the buildings that Donald Trump has taken out loans and mortgages on. One would imagine that there are plenty of potential creditors out there who could say he defrauded them. There may be a series of possible lawsuits,” says the specialist.
Consequences that could even lead to criminal proceedings since this potential scheme could have been used for nearly 15 years according to Mr. Lavoie.
“You go to your banker and you ask for a loan saying that you earn a million a year, but when the gentleman from Revenu Québec comes by you say that you barely have enough to feed your children, at some point the truth ends up regain their rights,” he explains.
Who is the next Donald Trump?
The financial problems of the ex-president concern many people according to the specialist since some of his colleagues even see an opportunity to seize power.
“There are Republicans behind who are saying ‘you know, I could be the next candidate for Trump supporters’ and there among the Republicans there may be someone who will say I am the anti-Trump, but this that we see more and more, a bit like the virus, there are variants. Trump was the original and some say to themselves “I could be Trump more”, underlines Mr. Lavoie.