Thanks to Rachel Maddow and MSNBC, we now know Hillary was making things up in the debates when she accused President Trump of nefarious reasons for not releasing his tax returns. And thanks to a reporter nobody heard of, so-called independent journalist David Cay Johnson, we know Trump was right when he said the "mainstream" media is indeed the enemy of the American people.

The self-righteous media willingly traffics in stolen goods -- Trump’s illegally leaked 2005 tax returns -- and all they wind up proving is that Trump paid a higher rate of taxes than his peers, and a higher rate than Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. The story here is not Trump’s taxes, but that someone at the IRS, the rogue agency that targeted the Tea Party, committed a felony. Where is the media drumbeat that the leaker be found and prosecuted?  

Maddow, MSNBC, and Johnson ought to have egg on their faces, seeing that not only did Trump not escape paying taxes, but also that he paid a higher rate than the likes of Sanders and Obama. The Obamas paid an effective tax rate of only 18.7 percent in 2015. Bernie Sanders paid a federal tax rate of only13.5 percent in 2014. Ironically, Comcast, the parent of MSNBC, paid a tax rate of only 24 percent from 2008 through 2012, less than Trump’s 2005 effective rate of roughly 25 percent. Trump paid $38 million in taxes on income of $150 million.

Exposed as a lie were Hillary Clinton’s slanderous innuendo during the September 26, 2016 presidential debate when she hinted candidate Trump was hiding something by not releasing his taxes: 

Clinton said, “So you’ve gotta ask yourself, why won’t he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don’t know all of his business dealings, but we have been told, through investigative reporting that, he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes. Because the only years that anybody has ever seen, were a couple of years where he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license. And they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.”

Hillary knew full well, or should have known, that it is allowed to deduct business losses, something that Trump pointed out that many of the donors to the Clinton Foundation did. If businesses couldn’t do that, investors wouldn’t invest and risk-takers wouldn’t take risks. Many startups and small businesses would fail and economic and job growth would be suffocated.

We have been down this road before, with a leak of portions of Trump’s 1995 tax returns during the 2016 campaign timed to aid the presidential hopes of Hilary Clinton.  This idea will be immediately dismissed in some quarters as just another conspiracy theory concocted by the vast right wing but it is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Several items lend credence to the idea that the IRS has once become an arm of the political left targeting conservatives.

Could it really be just coincidence that Hillary Clinton focused on Trump’s failure to release his tax returns, surmising that the reason might be he hasn’t been paying any taxes, just days before the New York Times printed pages from his 1995 return showing a loss that “may have” allowed him to not pay taxes for the next 18 years? Was this Hillary’s “October surprise” for Trump? It didn’t work then and won’t work now.

Compare Hillary’s debate remarks to the eerily similar statement released by Team Clinton almost immediately after the New York Times published the excerpts from Trump’s 1995 taxes:

There it is. The bombshell report reveals the colossal nature of Donald Trump’s past business failures and just how long he may have avoided paying any federal income taxes whatsoever. In one year, Donald Trump lost nearly a billion dollars. A billion. He stiffed small businesses, laid off workers, and walked away from hardworking communities. And how did it work out for him? He apparently got to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades – while tens of millions of working families paid theirs. He calls that ‘smart.’ Now that the gig is up, why doesn’t he go ahead and release his returns to show us all how ‘smart’ he really is?

Did Hillary know in advance Trump’s documents would be leaked and that this story would break within days of the debate? At this point, this can only be surmised that someone at the IRS leaked the documents, but when you consider the 2012 targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups by the IRS for the purpose of reelecting President Obama, the thought that this politicized agency might do a similar favor for Obama’s successor is, again, not so far-fetched.

As Investor’s Business Daily has noted, the adventures of Hillary Clinton and her missing and deleted emails from her private server are similar to the crashed hard drives of Lois Lerner, who masterminded the Tea Party targeting by the IRS in 2012:

Clinton, under this administration, will likely not fear or face any criminal prosecution for violating the Federal Records Act and doing her official business on that personal server now deliberately wiped clean of records she knew were under subpoena and the subject of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

But then, Lois Lerner, poster child for hard-drive crashes and missing emails, won't face charges for contempt of Congress either. After pleading her innocence at that 2013 hearing, Lerner went on to invoke her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Both Hillary Clinton and Lois Lerner used their political positions for their personal and political agendas. Both “lost” or destroyed the emails that would have proven their crimes. Lerner targeted the Tea Party. Hillary targets Donald Trump. Both benefit from acts that violated the laws. The New York Times says someone sent the documents to a reporter so they have no criminal liability. One finds it odd that if a private citizen receives stolen property, they go to jail. If a reporter receives stolen documents, they receive the Pulitzer Prize.

The IRS Chief and Lois Lerner’s boss, John Koskinen, has been the target of a move to impeach him for his role in covering up Lerner’s crimes, his obstruction of Congress, and outright lying to Congress. He is the poster child for political hacks and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that on his watch employees of a politicized agency that has the power to tax and therefore the proverbial power to destroy leaked Trump’s 1995 return for the political purpose of helping Hillary Clinton. After all, a Trump Department of Justice would not hesitate to prosecute both.

As the Washington Times notes, Koskinen has been knee-deep in the IRS corruption and its cover-up:

Among the specific charges leveled by Mr. Chaffetz and 18 of his fellow Republicans on the committee were that Mr. Koskinen, appointed by President Obama in December 2013 after the targeting scandal broke, misled Congress when he said he had turned over all of former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner’s emails and that he oversaw destruction of evidence when his agency got rid of backup tapes that contained the emails.

Lying to Congress and destruction of evidence under subpoena are federal crimes, and that includes the arrogant Mr. Koskinen, who is just one example of being an Obama donor can get you a good job with the administration. As Investor’s Business Daily noted:

Certainly, it might be argued that Koskinen's current position is owed to four decades of being a prodigious Democratic donor.

Koskinen has contributed to every Democratic presidential candidate since 1980, including $2,300 to Obama in 2008, and $5,000 to Obama in 2012. Of course, being an Obama donor with a government job in and of itself is not a crime, but how Koskinen has used that job is positively criminal. Koskinen once confessed before Congress that obeying the law was a difficult task:

Of course, being an Obama donor with a government job in and of itself is not a crime, but how Koskinen has used that job is positively criminal. Koskinen once confessed before Congress that “obeying the law was a difficult task:

"Whenever we can, we follow the law," IRS chief John Koskinen recently told the House Ways and Committee in a Freudian slip of the truth that says it all.

This longtime Democratic donor and the IRS has broken the law to help President Obama and his wannabe successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and to damage the administration of Donald Trump. Someone at the IRS has repeatedly broken the law and should be located and prosecuted, even if that means Koskinen himself.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.