SOURCE:
THE DAILY BEASTURL:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/02/is-a-cryptic-tweet-by-marla-maples-a-clue-as-to-source-behind-trump-tax-leak.htmlby: Olivia Nuzzi
At 1:34 p.m. Sunday, Donald Trump’s second ex-wife, Marla Maples, tweeted a photograph of a pumpkin patch. Does what happened next contain clues that confirm she anonymously mailed Trump’s 1995 tax return to The New York Times?
Maybe, or maybe it’s nothing at all! Please bear with me here.
Maples, who told me last month she’s been practicing Kabbalah for twenty years, captioned the photo of the pumpkins and the hay, “
#FallLove Breathe it in as if 2day’s the first day of your life. The kabbalist’s say 2nite Adam&Eve were created. S… [sic]”
In response to the tweet, Marc Caputo, a Politico reporter, said, “
TFW you serve up a cold plate of revenge and then appreciate fall as you think about Etz Hayim, the Shekinah & Isaac ben Luria.”
Twitter user @PoliticalBuffs then replied to Maples and Caputo, “
wow. How do u know abt those stuff? [sic]”
To which Maples said, “
A lot of studying & an open mind to learn” with both a star emoji and a prayer emoji."
On Saturday night, the Times published Trump’s 1995 tax return, a three-page document that revealed he had declared a $916 million loss, which, in the Times’ assessment, means he then potentially could have legally avoided “paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.”
This is the sparkly unicorn of opposition research relating to the Republican nominee, who has thus far refused to participate in the disclosure of financial documents customary of major party nominees since the Nixon era. Reporters, editors, and publishers wanted Trump’s tax returns so badly that Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor, publicly said he’d be willing to go to jail to publish them, which in the end, was apparently an effective means of obtaining them.
But nobody knows who sent them.
The documents were mailed with a New York City postmark and a Trump Tower return address to Times reporter Susanne Craig, who covers City Hall but in August displayed a nuanced understanding of Trump’s business dealings with the story “
Trump’s Empire: A Maze of Debts and Opaque Ties.” As far as the public knows, that’s the only information about the sender.
Besides Trump, who would be in possession of such a valuable document?
Maples would.
In 1995, Trump was married to the zen actress (their holy union would come to its unfortunate conclusion two years later). She signed the tax returns “Marla Trump” in her delicate script.
Her spokeswoman, Elissa Buchter, did not respond when asked if she was behind the leak, not that she would have any incentive to. The attorney who represented Maples in her divorce from Trump (and also represented Ivana Trump in her divorce from Trump, but that’s another story), Robert Stephan Cohen, did not respond to two phone calls Saturday night to his office and home.
One source who previously worked for Trump’s campaign speculated, via text, that the leaker might be someone in the casino business, where the mogul made many enemies over the years and might’ve had to present his taxes.
The only thing we can say for certain is that Trump possesses this document, and at least at one point, so did Maples.
But did she do it?
Maples is ambivalent about publicly undermining Trump’s candidacy.
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