Who Is Lying — Donald Trump or Donald Trump?

One of the screaming issues of our time is whether and to what extent Donald Trump has had or now has business dealings with Russia.

To understand the answer to that question, it would be helpful to have a look at Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, but, of course, during the campaign, he lied about his intention to disclose them, then used the bogus excuse of audits as a justification, then argued, illogically, that since he won the election, no one cared any longer about seeing his tax returns. There is no current likelihood that his tax returns will be revealed unless the Republicans in Congress improbably decide it is time to put the country about Republican Party interests.

There is a hint, however, about the Trump-Russia business connection in two videos in which Trump speaks about his business interests in Russia. The first one was recorded in an appearance on the David Letterman show in 2013: http://bit.ly/2qeKJyg. Fast forward to about 14:45 and watch for 15 seconds.

More recently, Trump was interviewed by Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/politics/transcript-donald-trump-nbc-news/

Page 7 of the interview transcript contains this from Trump:

I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever. Uh I don’t have property in Russia. A lot of people thought I owned office buildings in Moscow. I don’t have property in Russia, and I am uh in very I, I mean it in total compliance in every way. Now I have to tell you uh I file documents, hundreds of pages worth of documents with the Federal Elections Bureau, everybody’s seen them. I built a great company, but I’m not involved with Russia uh I have had dealings over the years where I sold a house to a very wealthy Russian uh many years ago uh I had the Miss Universe pageant which I owned for quite a while, I had it in Moscow long time ago, but other than that I have nothing to do with Russia.

Then decide for yourself whether the liar is Donald Trump or Donald Trump.