Yes, There WAS Collusion

Part I: Collusion
Imagine for a moment that you were contacted by a criminal organization and asked to meet with their representatives to discuss you receiving something that would benefit you. i.e. a lot of money. You meet with them and find out that the money has been stolen from a business rival from across town and these funds will be deposited in your bank account in small increments over the next year. "Cool" you say "I can always use more money, this will help me put my rival's business under". Over the next year members of your family and executives in your company are seen meeting with members of this criminal organization. At Chamber of Commerce meetings you have been making remarks praising the head of this criminal organization. Every month these "small increments" are deposited in your bank account, and start getting larger. Although you have not been asked to participate in the actual bank robberies, you continue to accept these payments. As time goes by you use these extra funds to push your rival out of business and you become the sole business in your market sector.

That's what Mueller's conclusion that there was no coordination or conspiracy between Trump & his campaign and the Russian government was like. The Report made clear that "collusion" was not a legal term, so "conspiracy to commit a crime" was the legal bar that had to be cleared in order for there to be any finding of legal wrongdoing. The Report also shows that it is extremely difficult to get an indictment for conspiracy, the evidence must be clear and overwhelming. The Report was crystal clear that the Trump campaign, like the business owner in my little fable who received money, received a benefit from the Russian Government - stolen emails and false stories about his opponent, Secretary Clinton. It was also crystal clear that Trump, his family and his aides were all "cool" with receiving this assistance, but that a legal case for conspiracy that could stand up in court could not be made.

This is quite a different thing from exoneration, quite different from "no collusion".

Read The Report. There was all manner of colluding. From Donnie Junior, along with top campaign officials, accepting a meeting where the stated purpose was to pass on "dirt on Clinton" to the numerous meetings by campaign officials with a variety of Russians to Trump's calling for Russia to find Clinton's missing emails. While this illegal acceptance of assistance from a foreign government was, in the main, passive, there is certainly enough smoke to justify looking for the fire.

This is where Congress comes in. Over two years Mueller and his team labored to establish facts. Despite stonewalling and lying, despite destruction and withholding of records, despite constant attempts at obstruction by Trump, quite a few facts have come out. It was never in Mueller's purview to press charges against the President if he thought the facts warranted it. In fact, regarding conspiracy, he thought that the facts didn't warrant it. Congress's responsibility to remove a President is not limited solely to violations of the criminal code. It is the responsibility of Congress to examine the information in the Mueller Report, as well as the testimony and documentation that it is based on, to come to its own conclusions about the President's behavior and whether that behavior merits impeachment.

It not "over" just because The Report has been completed. It's not the responsibility of the Attorney General, or still less, the President, to interpret its application or to decide on its consequences. The hearings proceeding in the House of Representatives are a natural continuation of the investigation and an exercise of Congress's constitutional authority and responsibility.

Part II: Obstruction
The question of obstruction is quite a bit clearer than the case for conspiracy. One of Trump's defenses against a charge of obstruction of justice is that since there was no underlying crime, there was nothing to obstruct. This is ridiculous on its face. In an accusation of obstruction of justice, the obstruction is of the investigation. In the case of obstruction, one doesn't even need to read the report to see Trump attempting to obstruct the work of the Special Counsel while we all watched. Attempts to fire Mueller that only failed because aides refused to carry out his orders; the actual firing of the FBI Director; pressure for the first Attorney General to "unrecuse" himself; as well as almost daily attacks on Mueller's integrity and motives and veiled threats to witnesses that took place in public for all to see. The lawyer in "My Cousin Vinnie"  could make a case for obstruction of justice

Part III: Beginnings of the Investigation
This part is a bit more opaque. There was no one source of information that caused investigations into the connection between Russia and the Trump campaign to take place. Much is made of the unreliability of the "Steele Dossier" (which in reality was in large part verified, even though some parts remain unverified and possibly untrue), but Steele's work was only one item among several that spurred a closer look at the campaign: George Papadopoulos drunkenly admitting to an Australian official that the Russians were giving them dirt on Clinton; Carter Page showing up in phone conversations with Russian intelligence agents who were under surveillance; not to mention Trump's own business ties with Russia, which he lied about. As the investigation proceeded, numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian agents were revealed, which Trump officials almost always lied about.

Part IV: Retaliation
We are now in a weird zone where Congress, or at least the House of Representatives, is continuing the investigation and impeachment is on everyone's mind. Trump is shouting "No Collusion, No Obstruction" despite The Report not saying precisely that on collusion and the exact opposite on obstruction.  Now Trump has authorized the Attorney General to investigate the origins of the investigation, casting aspersions on the FBI, including the current director that he appointed, as well as heads of the intelligence agencies. If anyone thinks that this isn't politically inspired retaliation, I have a Russian bridge to sell you.

Trump and Depreciation

With the latest information about the tax schemes of Donnie Two-Scoops hitting the interwebs this week, there's talk about depreciation...and most of it is inaccurate. News reports paint depreciation as some giant scam which allows the rich to avoid paying taxes. What it is, is a way to spread the expense of a major purchase over the life of that purchase.

The first thing to understand is that, for a business, your taxable income is your gross, or total, revenue minus your expenses. If you sell $100,000 of product, but your labor costs, equipment maintenance, supplies, rent etc comes to $55,000, then your taxable income is $45,000. That is, you pay taxes on $45,000, not $100,000. If your revenue was only $40,000 (maybe your store suffered tornado damage) but expenses were still $55,000 then you had a net loss of $15,000 and would pay no taxes.

If a developer buys a building for $390,000, that's an expense. But it's a particular kind of expense. It's the purchase of an asset that does not get used up right away, like office supplies, or sold, like inventory. If this developer had $100,000 in revenue and subtracted the $390,000 he would have a loss of $290,000. But the IRS allows the developer to spread out the expense over the projected life of the building, in the case of commercial property, 39 years (other types of assets have shorter projected useful lives). So, assuming that gross revenue is still $100,000, the depreciation expense would be $10,000 every year, giving the developer a net income of $90,000 before taking into account any other expenditures. Either way the developer spent the money, making it a legitimate expense to be deducted from gross revenue, the only difference is when the expense is deducted.

Now this becomes a cash flow advantage to the developer since he probably didn't spend his own money on the building, but took out a loan that would take 5-20 years to pay off. This also allows the net income reported to investors to be somewhat consistent, rather than extremes of profit or loss that might occur when making very large asset purchases.

Trump has been pointing out that net losses due to depreciation are normal. But the thing is, eventually you have to get to the point where your revenue exceeds your expenses. The depreciation expense may not be a cash expense, that is, it doesn't reduce the amount of cash on hand in the year that you take it, but at some point you spent that money and need to earn enough revenue to pay for it. You either spent it in one lump sum upon purchase (unlikely) or you're paying every month in principal and interest payments.

[We've been talking about the effect of depreciation on income tax, the effect on property tax is different and is outside the scope of this discussion]

An analysis that I saw last night suggested that the reported losses were much higher than could be explained solely by depreciation. The story, in my opinion, is not that Trump legitimately claimed depreciation expenses to offset his income but whether:

1.  His other expenses were legitimate
2. The valuations that he put on his buildings was legitimate (mainly for property tax)
3. These losses indicate incompetence at business
4. He is just a self-promoting blowhard

The fact that he claimed losses does not alone prove any wrongdoing, if he legally and legitimately claimed expenses that reduced his taxable income, then he is, as he said in the debates, smart (or at least his accountants are). What this does show, in my view, is that Trump was not the business guru that he claimed to be, and what he has always been good at is making sure that he got paid even when businesses failed, and convincing people that he is a business guru.