Was It Legal For The NYT To Release Trump’s 1995 Tax Return? Matt Vespa Posted: Oct 03, 2016

The media and the Democrats are going nuts over Trump’s 1995 tax return. It shows that the Republican nominee could’ve avoided paying the IRS for almost 20 years due to a staggering $916 million in losses. The New York Times reported on this finding over the weekend. They obtained the three-page return indicating that Trump utilized the net operating loss provision, which “allows a dizzying array of deductions, business expenses, real estate depreciation, losses from the sale of business assets and even operating losses to flow from the balance sheets of those partnerships, limited liability companies and S corporations onto the personal tax returns of men like Mr. Trump.”
The fact of the matter is what Trump did was legal. There’s no real story here. Moreover, it offers an incomplete financial profile of Trump. Yet, there’s another level to this story. Was this even legal for The Times to release publicly? Tax returns are a highly sensitive matter that requires approval prior to disclosure. Obviously, The Times did not get that sign off from Donald Trump. The law is very clear here, and The Hill’s Joe Concha took the publication to task for sacrificing their ethics to publish this story. He also took the newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, for failing in the integrity department regarding this position in media:

Federal law clearly states it is illegal to publish someone's tax returns without authorization:
It shall be unlawful for any person to whom any return or return information (as defined in section 6103(b)) is disclosed in a manner unauthorized by this title thereafter willfully to print or publish in any manner not provided by law any such return or return information. Any violation of this paragraph shall be a felony punishable by a fine in any amount not exceeding $5,000, or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.

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