Andrew Duehren

So yeah, this story really starts the first time that President Trump ran for office in 2016.

he was unique among presidential candidates at that time.

And this was something of a scandal in that he did not release his tax returns.

It was standard practice for presidential candidates to put out some of their tax information as a way to understand their finances.

And Trump didn't do that.

And this was a topic of wide interest throughout his first term.

There were

various attempts to see his tax returns.

And that didn't happen until the New York Times in 2020 published a series of stories describing what Trump had been doing on his taxes and revealing that for many years, Trump had been paying little in federal income taxes.

Yes.

It wasn't clear how.

It wasn't clear where this information came from.

It could have maybe come from

accountants or lawyers who worked for

President Trump or ad work for President Trump or the Trump Organization, it wasn't clear what the source of this information was.

But reporters for The Times had gotten their hands on and reviewed President Trump's tax returns.

Fast forward about six months to a year after that, and ProPublica, a separate news organization, they start releasing a series of stories about the tax strategies and tax situations of some of the world's wealthiest people.

you know, looking at the tax situations of people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, the positions they were taking on their taxes and a lot of detail.

And so at that point, it became clear that given the tax information of so many different people, I mean, eventually it's been disclosed that thousands of individuals and entities had their information released that somebody within the IRS and with access to internal IRS records must have been the source of these stories.

Yes, that there was somebody in their systems who was providing this information to the press.