Finally.

This is the type of investigation that the United States needed to do prior to June of 2016, giving the GOP a chance to nominate someone else. The moment Trump sent signals that he would not be offering up his taxes, it sent red flags flying in all directions and everybody knew it. For the last fifty years, it’s been a matter of course that a president would show his or her income taxes in order to prevent the appearance of self-dealing. Not only did Trump break that tradition (and the huge concern behind it), he then went the next step and didn’t release control of his business properties.

It was the beginning of what we’re “beginning” to call Trump “hypnosis,” similar to highway hypnosis, where a person becomes numb to all the fukt-up Trump moves, just accepting the crazed abnormality of his presidency. Some of them started because no one thought he’d win and so no one made a huge deal about giving up control of his businesses. By the time he won, it was too late.

For over two years, we have been saying that the only way Trump would end up in prison (this was prior to Jan. 6th) was if an investigation discovered huge financial conflicts with Russia. Financial conflicts would open the door to everything else. Trump feared that investigation like no other. He likely awoke every day terrified that the NYT or WaPo had an explosive expose on his financial entanglements – the real ones.  NY may convict him of tax fraud, but we seriously doubt a state can imprison a former president (nor want to, think of January 6th).  But an open and overt conflict with the Russian mafia? That would do it.

And the most obvious targets would be the most obviously absurd purchases, the golf courses in Scotland that had astounding success in losing astonishing amounts of money every year. The Scots knew what was going on, everyone knew what was going on. Mystery money appeared and money doesn’t just appear for mysterious reasons. Only criminal money appears for mysterious reasons and it’s impossible to move large amounts of money out of Russia. All self-respecting Russian oligarchs (which translates to “owned by Putin”) needs someone to move the money and all too often, it’s through Deutsche Bank, which has incurred massive fines for doing so and also happens to be the only international bank left in existence that will loan to Trump. Puzzling.

The Scots find this all very puzzling and these golf courses are historic treasures. The Scots opposed Trump’s purchases from day one. Now they’re finally getting around to doing the actual intensive investigation that was needed long ago. From The Scotsman:

Its petition to the court stated that there are “no reasonable grounds” to suspect that known sources of lawfully obtained income would have been sufficient to bankroll Mr Trump’s acquisition of his Scottish properties.”

Obviously, that’s just the petition, loosely analogous to a warrant in the United States, to begin an intensive investigation that can result in prosecution. The point is that the books are about to be opened under what the Scots call the “McMafia law”:

Now, Lord Sandison has given the green light for Avaaz to seek a judicial review, a development which will reignite the debate over how Mr Trump acquired his Scottish resorts during a decade-long spending spree.

Nick Flynn, legal director at Avaaz, said the judgement would help seek answers about Mr Trump’s purchase of Turnberry. “Today’s win means Scottish ministers will now be challenged in court over their ongoing failure to seek an UWO to investigate Trump’s suspicious Turnberry purchase,” he said.

Open. The. Books. Because with Trump, it’s always about the money. Trump is probably one of only a handful of people, for whom becoming “the President of the United States of America” was fundamentally an opportunity to make more money, not “be” president. The presidency, then seemed to transition into a means of avoiding prosecution. But he’s having a bit harder time with that prosecution thing now.

So, we have New York going, for whatever it is worth, and we now have the then acting-A.G. testifying that Trump told him to sign a letter finding fraud in the election as a run up to January 6th, and now the Scots are going to give a hard look at whether his money is legitimate.

We don’t pretend to have any expertise in U.K. law, generally, or Scot law in particular, but this seems to be a private suit challenging why the government hasn’t investigated this (fairly obvious) fraud, the judge found enough of it to be curious so as to demand and the government somehow prove the funds seem legitimate. That proof requires…

Well, someone’s going to be looking into some books involving an all cash sale. That’s more than what NY is doing. This is only partly about taxes. Questions must be answered about international “cash” stuff. This could get good.

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