Donald Trump speaks at Conservative Political Action Conference 2011 in Washington, DC, on February 10, 2011. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
To readers who follow taxes and finance — subjects often introduced with the adjective “arcane” — David Cay Johnston is one of America’s best-known reporters. Johnston has worked on the staffs of Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and from 1995 to 2008, The New York Times, where his writing on taxes won him a 2001 Pulitzer Prize. He’s branched out to other subjects too: His first book, published in 1992, was Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business.
In a web post last July, Johnston asked 21 questions about Donald Trump’s finances. One pertained to Trump University, subsequently the object of close scrutiny in many venues. Others concerned mysteries about Trump’s charitable donations, his years paying zero income tax, his more recent — and undisclosed — tax returns and some his acquisition of casino licenses and his reputed connections with organized crime.
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While there are some financial subjects on which the media has dared to grill the billionaire — ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last month got Trump to deliver a blunt “no” when he asked about the Republican nominee-apparent’s repeated refusal to release his recent tax returns, something every other recent presidential candidate has done — there has been remarkably little interest shown in some of Trump’s less-than-savory connections.
One of the exceptions is Johnston, who, over the course of 27 years, has had ample occasion to pay attention to Trump’s finances and mob ties. He was not the first investigative reporter to do so. In 1992, Johnston favorably reviewed the longtime Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett’s highly unauthorized biography, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, which, in Johnston’s words, “asserts that throughout his adult…