Donald Trump Was Never Vetted

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/donald-trump-never-vetted-investigation-mueller.html?utm_source=tw

“When a man becomes president,” said Rudy Giuliani not long ago, “he shouldn’t be subject to a review of his entire life.” Putting aside for the moment whether such a review should or should not take place, Giuliani has correctly identified what is happening. The new Democratic House that will conduct oversight into the presidency and obtain his tax returns, the multiple state-level investigations into Trump’s transparent business fraud, and the Mueller probe will all pry open a massive trove of secrets held tight over decades.

Giuliani’s position is that, having been elected president, Trump should be granted immunity for his past crimes. (Of course, Giuliani also opposes holding Trump accountable for his misdeeds since taking office, like obstruction of justice, but never mind.) Giuliani’s complaint may intuitively seem fair — why should Trump, or any president, face another review of his entire life? That, after all, is what presidential campaigns are for, so presumably Trump’s election settled that matter. But the answer to this query is that, in truth, Trump was never really vetted in the first place.

This may seem like a strange thing to say about such an apparently familiar persona. Trump has been a ubiquitous character in American culture for decades. He first contemplated running for president more than 30 years ago, and 18 years ago “President Trump” was already a comedy punchline. Trump’s career has produced a body of coverage so massive that no single person could possibly hope to absorb it all. Yet we are even now discovering the extent to which Trump is a secretive, mysterious figure who has escaped basic scrutiny. And this oversight has occurred not despite his media overexposure but, in some ways, because of it.

It was only three months ago that the New York Times published a dramatic exposé upending the entire Trump financial mythos. Trump had always insisted he had received “just” a $1 million loan from his father as a young man, which he repaid. Before the Times’ story came out, his critics used to express doubt that Trump had actually ever paid back the million dollars. In fact, the Times established that Trump has received $413 million from his father, all in gifts rather than loans, and the vast bulk of it transferred illegally, to avoid estate and gift tax.

What’s more, the story reconstructs how Fred Trump carefully manufactured his son’s image. The family presented its young heir to the media as an already-accomplished young millionaire of his own. The key vehicle for the publicity campaign was the Times itself. In 1976, a reporter toured Trump’s properties alongside him in a chauffeured Cadillac and dutifully fawned over the “tall, lean and blond” developer, who had amassed more than $200 million at the tender age of 30. The Times now debunks its own story. It reports that all the properties depicted in the story as Donald’s burgeoning empire — even the Cadillac they rode around in — were actually purchased by Fred Trump.