Chapter 1: What is the Anti-Weaponization Fund and why was it created?
This is Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. No question too big, no question too small, no question too taxing. We were not supposed to have an episode this week, and yet here we are. All because of a big national news story that has been developing. A story that we here at the show have not been able to stop talking about. President Trump's anti-weaponization fund.
The origin story of that fund actually begins years ago with an enormous IRS leak, a leak that let the American public see both Trump's tax returns as well as the tax information of hundreds of American billionaires. It was obvious at the time that this was a huge story. We covered it here at Search Engine.
Chapter 2: How did Jesse Eisinger become involved in the reporting on tax avoidance?
What was not obvious, though, was where it would lead. Jesse Isinger, a journalist at ProPublica, played a weirdly large role in the chain reaction that's led us to today. So we asked him back to Search Engine Studios to help us understand what's going on here. I kind of want to like return to the story that you told last time we spoke, but I know not everyone will have listened to that episode.
Can you just tell me like many years ago, you got an anonymous tip, which led to a big reporting project. Can you just like sort of describe what the tip was and what the reporting project was in brief? Sure.
I was born in a log cabin. One day, I was looking at my phone, and a signal pops up, and a guy wanted to get in touch with me. It was a tip like I get many times a week, and this one turned out to be the greatest tip I've
Chapter 3: What were the implications of the IRS leak on Trump's tax returns?
ever had. Eventually, the guy leaked to us the tax information for all of the wealthiest people in America, all the household names that you could imagine. Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, et cetera, et cetera, Elon Musk. And then we gathered a huge team at ProPublica to report on the tax returns. And Paul Keel was my partner in this.
And we eventually over years published over 50 stories based on these returns about the tax avoidance strategies of the wealthy. And the big picture is, surprise, surprise, the lay understanding of our tax system is that it's extraordinarily unfair and that people who are extremely wealthy avoid taxes in myriad ways, some of them entirely legal and very simple to do.
Chapter 4: How does the Anti-Weaponization Fund operate?
What we did was very powerful because we named names. So we showed that Jeff Bezos had literally paid zero in taxes for two years when he was a billionaire, and Michael Bloomberg paid zero in taxes, and Carl Icahn paid zero. And what we also showed is that they pay, of just trifling sums of taxes compared to their wealth growth.
So they avoid income, and by avoiding income, they avoid taxes, and their wealth grows and grows, and then often they borrow against their wealth to fund their lifestyles.
At the time that you were writing your story, you didn't know the identity of the person who was leaking to you, but later he was caught, he was arrested, and so you found out his identity.
Yes. Yeah, he was a contractor for the IRS working for a consulting firm, Booz Allen. He's a guy named Charles Little John, and he had actually leaked the— Trump tax returns to the New York Times and provided them with the information to write their blockbuster story on Trump's tax avoidance strategies.
Chapter 5: What controversies surround the distribution of the Anti-Weaponization Fund?
Huge, important public service. And then he realized that the problem of tax avoidance was much bigger than one person and wanted to expose the tax avoidance strategies of Trump. The wealthiest among us, and that's when he came to us. He had seen – Paul and I had done a series of stories.
I like to think of it as the least read, most boring investigative series of all time, which was about the gutting of the IRS. Yeah. But one person who was very important actually read that, which was Charles Littlejohn. And he, unbeknownst to us, we didn't know his identity, as you just said, he gave us the tax returns. And then that actually got him caught.
If he had just leaked the tax returns of Trump, he wouldn't have gotten caught.
Chapter 6: How does the fund affect transparency in government spending?
He would have gotten away with it. Was it just because now he had access to more – it was easier to cross-reference? Yeah, it was much easier to figure out where it came from. And one person's tax returns could have come from so many different areas that the IRS didn't even occur to them to kind of do a search for that kind of query.
But the massive queries that little John had done just stuck out. They're very obvious. Yeah. And so the IRS figured it out. They charged him. He pled guilty and is now serving a five-year prison sentence, which is the longest sentence for anyone who leaked non-classified information in American history for what I consider to be a great public service.
Chapter 7: What are the potential consequences of the fund for American democracy?
So I consider him to be a whistleblower of great importance.
And so, remember, Trump had been the first presidential candidate in a long time to not voluntarily disclose his tax returns. People had a lot of questions about whether he was paying taxes, about his money. And so I remember the moment that his tax return was published. I remember the reporting that you guys did about just sort of the way the wealthy were engaging in tax avoidance.
At the time of that reporting, as you were working on it, what was your sort of like... if you'd stopped and thought, I don't know if you did, but like the best case scenario of like Trump's tax return is going to come to light. All these other people's tax strategies are going to come to light. Like what was the like hopeful outcome of what all that could mean?
Chapter 8: What insights does Jesse Eisinger provide on the future of tax policy?
Yeah, well, I don't really operate with a lot of hope. I'm like, I don't wake up in the morning just thinking, what changes will make American society better today? I can't wait to see them. But, you know, I think the system should be reformed and can be reformed to make the wealthiest pay more. And so you take somebody like Donald Trump,
And one of the things that was – I was shocked by it, and I refuse to not be shocked by these things, and I refuse to kind of succumb to cynicism, is that he literally did not pay taxes for years and years. And it turns out that he's not alone because – commercial real estate billionaires can pay zero in taxes.
It's because they, it's a simple reason, is that they get to say that their buildings are losing value. It's just an accounting fiction. But in fact, what's happening is the buildings are appreciating value. That tends to be what happens to property in America. Yes, especially in New York, right? And so the properties go up in value.
But these billionaires sometimes can say to the IRS, I'm personally losing $100 million a year. You see these people with these ludicrous, absurd statements of, you know, nine-figure losses on income. And so that's the magic of accounting.
So there are billionaires often who pay zero in federal income tax, but the more important thing was that they pay very little as a fraction of their kind of overall wealth growth.
Yeah.
And so I think one of the feelings I just as a person who wonders about the inner lives of other people, including the president, one of the things I'd wondered about was like, honestly, like, did he care? You know what I mean? I was like, does he care? Can you tell me about the nudes this week?
Yeah, so, I mean, I don't know if he has much of an inner life. The president, did he care? You mean, was he upset or offended about having his taxes leaked? Yeah. He, Trump, repeatedly acted as if he was violated for this. Now, as you just said, what he was doing was violating a norm of behavior that had lasted for about 50 years for major presidential candidates.
they released their tax returns. So underlying that leak was this extraordinary violation of what we think is a fundamental kind of aspect of transparency when we come to our major political leaders. So what he did was he waited for a while and then he sued the IRS in one of the most extraordinary actions that any president has taken in American history.
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