The staffs of both the New York Times and the Washington Post are working overtime to dig deeper into Donald Trump’s business affairs. And it’s getting juicier and juicier, mostly because the known facts are not adding up. WaPo explains:

In 1995, Donald Trump was in the midst of a spending spree. He had recently bought a 727 jet for personal use, added a skyscraper to his Manhattan real estate portfolio and snapped up properties in Telluride, Colo., and Palm Beach, Fla., financial records show.

That same year, he said he had negative $916 million in “federal adjusted gross income,” a claim that gave him the prospect of avoiding federal income taxes for years to come.

So how could he be thriving and avoiding taxes at the same time?

That’s the central mystery behind the state tax documents filed in New York by Trump for 1995 and disclosed this weekend by the New York Times.

Hmm. Well, another WaPo story says this:

Trump’s bid for the White House relies heavily on his ability to sell himself as a master businessman, a standout performer in real estate and reality TV.

But interviews with former shareholders and analysts as well as years of financial filings reveal a striking characteristic of his business record: Even when his endeavors failed and other people lost money, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee found a way to make money for himself, to market his Trump-branded products and to pay for his expensive lifestyle. …

… Trump’s campaign did not make him available to respond to specific questions about the company, but in a recent Washington Post interview, Trump said he “made a lot of money in Atlantic City,” adding, “I make great deals for myself.”

Josh Marshall explains:

He avoided personal ruin in part by getting the banks who backed him to forgive a lot of the debt. But he also tricked members of the public into taking over his failed businesses….

… the gist is that Trump set up his first major public company Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. It was listed on the NYSE and members of the public, including quite a few individual investors, bought the stock. It was an IPO of a mature, indeed already failing company. But Trump used the allure of the Trump name to entice people in.

Over the next several years the businesses swirled down the drain and Trump was able to sell his other distressed casinos to the public company. In other words, he was both the buyer and the seller. So he sold the deeply indebted and already failing Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Castle to the company at a price of his choosing. While he was doing this he continued to pay himself tens of millions of dollars a year as the company’s CEO in addition to using the company to help out his other businesses. By all these machinations he managed to have the company’s major expenditures be paying off or at least servicing the debts he had racked up before the public company came into existence. At the end of the day basically everyone who invested in Trump company lost everything.

The company launched in 1995, the same year Trump claimed almost a $1 billion in losses on his tax return. Clearly these two things were related. Indeed, the Casino business was the essence of Trump’s business empire at that point. We just don’t know precisely how it all fits together because unlike the public company which had to make all the filings every public does, Trump’s personal finances are private and remain that way because he’s refused to release his tax returns.

The Times has more details about Trump’s bad investments. At one point, when he was about to go belly up, his father gave him a “loan” by sending “a lawyer to the Castle casino to buy $3.3 million in chips and leave without cashing them.”

Now, I don’t know if any of this is illegal, but it certainly isn’t good.

Oh, and Julian Assange’s big announcement was a bust. He had nothin’. I’m guessing Vladimir decided Trump was a lost cause and stopped feeding him leaks.

Update: From September, but related — Trump’s Riches and the Real-Estate Tax Racket.

Update: Fortune magazine says that Trump’s presidential campaign is destroying his “brand.”

Over the past 12 months Trump has almost certainly been devaluing his brand among the customers who are most important to his businesses – high-income individuals plus the corporations that rent space in his office buildings and hold conferences and meetings in his hotels or hotels that have licensed his name.

Trump’s supporters in the election tend to be less educated and poorer than voters overall; they’re not his customers. By contrast, he’s losing heavily among college-educated voters, a group that includes most of his individual customers. Corporate customers find it increasingly difficult to associate themselves with Trump-branded real estate because of his astonishing ability to offend assorted groups – Latinos, Muslims, women, the disabled. No mainstream corporation wants to offend those groups by occupying space with Trump’s name in shiny gold capital letters on the front.

There’s evidence that Trump’s brand devaluation is happening. Bloomberg cites research showing that among consumers earning over $150,000 a year, the Trump brand’s value had plummeted by the end of last year. Other research finds that the market share of Trump casinos, hotels, and golf course plunged 14% from July 2015 to July 2016.

Here’s something to reflect upon — the men surrounding Donald Trump who are urging him to campaign on Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities include Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Roger Ailes.

And no, you can’t make this shit up. Go ahead and clean the spewed coffee off your monitor if you need to.

I read that Trump was up half the night last night tweeting trash about Alicia Machado and advising America to see her “sex tape.” Telling the American people to watch a sex tape has to be a first for a U.S. presidential candidate. The Clinton campaign already is using the tweetstorm against him.

The Alicia Machado saga really was a brilliant move on Clinton’s part. Not only can’t Trump let it go — four days on, and he’s still ranting over something he could have put to rest easily Monday night — but Clinton had Machado in the audience Monday night and also had a video about Machado in the can and ready to be released as soon as the debates were over.

And Trump can’t let it go. Josh Marshall is calling it “Khan 2.0.”

This morning NBC News got a leaked version of the ‘talking points’ the Trump campaign is giving surrogates discussing Alicia Machado. They almost perfectly mirror Trump’s stages of denial dealing with the Khans. Machado is “vicious”, “desperate”, her charges are “baseless and unsubstantiated”, Clinton is a fake feminist, and what about Monica? Any halfway competent campaign would realize the ‘talking points’ on this issue are quite simple: Don’t talk about it! The ‘charges’ against Trump are nothing more than things he said on video. There are no charges. Just quotes. There is nothing in dispute. It’s just showing people what he said.

But ‘not talking about it’ assumes, actually requires you can get Trump to stop talking about it – especially, stop talking about how overweight she was or what a stand up guy he was for trying to get her to lose weight.

I can just see President Trump — Los Angeles could be on fire, and he’d be up all night tweeting because somebody insulted his hair.

See also Joan Walsh.

The Washington Post reports that the Trump Foundations lacks the proper certification for a charity that solicits money. I liked this part:

Experts on charity law said they were surprised that Trump’s foundation — given its connections to a wealthy man and his complex corporation — did not register to solicit funds.

“He’s a billionaire who acts like a thousandaire,” said James J. Fishman, a professor at Pace University’s law school in White Plains, N.Y. He said Trump’s foundation seemed to have made errors, including the lack of proper registration, that were more common among very small family foundations.

“You wouldn’t expect somebody who’s supposed to be sophisticated, and brags about his business prowess, would run his foundation like this,” Fishman said.

It’s possible that a court could order  him to return any money he had solicited, which could include $1.67 million solicited this year “for veterans.” He also has a habit of telling people who owe him money to give it to the Foundation instead of him, ostensibly as a way to avoid paying taxes on income. That would probably qualify as “soliciting.”

Howard Stern has spoken out and said Trump expressed support for the Iraq War in 2002.

Fivethirtyeight shows that Clinton definitely got a p0st-debate bounce. The next debate will be Sunday, October 9, in St. Louis. Stay tuned.

Going back to the debate, which really was the most fun thing that happened this week … now Trump is whining that Lester Holt “went after” him and asked him unfair questions.  In truth, Lester Holt was barely there and only occasionally got in a word edgewise.

But in reviewing the transcript, it struck me that Holt spent more time aiming questions at Trump simply because Trump wouldn’t provide simple answers. Hillary Clinton would answer questions. She spoke in complete sentences that got right to what she wanted to say. Trump would spew out word salad, and Holt kept having to ask the same question again. For example:

HOLT: Mr. Trump, we’re talking about the burden that Americans have to pay, yet you have not released your tax returns. And the reason nominees have released their returns for decades is so that voters will know if their potential president owes money to — who he owes it to and any business conflicts. Don’t Americans have a right to know if there are any conflicts of interest?

TRUMP: I don’t mind releasing — I’m under a routine audit. And it’ll be released. And — as soon as the audit’s finished, it will be released.

But you will learn more about Donald Trump by going down to the federal elections, where I filed a 104-page essentially financial statement of sorts, the forms that they have. It shows income — in fact, the income — I just looked today — the income is filed at $694 million for this past year, $694 million. If you would have told me I was going to make that 15 or 20 years ago, I would have been very surprised.

But that’s the kind of thinking that our country needs. When we have a country that’s doing so badly, that’s being ripped off by every single country in the world, it’s the kind of thinking that our country needs, because everybody — Lester, we have a trade deficit with all of the countries that we do business with, of almost $800 billion a year. You know what that is? That means, who’s negotiating these trade deals?

We have people that are political hacks negotiating our trade deals.

HOLT: The IRS says an audit…

TRUMP: Excuse me.

HOLT: … of your taxes — you’re perfectly free to release your taxes during an audit. And so the question, does the public’s right to know outweigh your personal…

TRUMP: Well, I told you, I will release them as soon as the audit. Look, I’ve been under audit almost for 15 years. I know a lot of wealthy people that have never been audited. I said, do you get audited? I get audited almost every year.

And in a way, I should be complaining. I’m not even complaining. I don’t mind it. It’s almost become a way of life. I get audited by the IRS. But other people don’t.

I will say this. We have a situation in this country that has to be taken care of. I will release my tax returns — against my lawyer’s wishes — when she releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted. As soon as she releases them, I will release.

(APPLAUSE)

I will release my tax returns. And that’s against — my lawyers, they say, “Don’t do it.” I will tell you this. No — in fact, watching shows, they’re reading the papers. Almost every lawyer says, you don’t release your returns until the audit’s complete. When the audit’s complete, I’ll do it. But I would go against them if she releases her e-mails.

HOLT: So it’s negotiable?

TRUMP: It’s not negotiable, no. Let her release the e-mails. Why did she delete 33,000…

HOLT: Well, I’ll let her answer that.

All that verbiage, and he never answered the question. Then we turn to Secretary Clinton:

HOLT: He also — he also raised the issue of your e-mails. Do you want to respond to that?

CLINTON: I do. You know, I made a mistake using a private e- mail.

TRUMP: That’s for sure.

CLINTON: And if I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently. But I’m not going to make any excuses. It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that.

Done and done. Of course, it would have been better had she made that statement earlier, like about 2012. She has her own problem with directly responding to criticism. But she got it right on Monday.

But that’s a pattern that was repeated as the night wore on. Holt asked Clinton a question, and she would answer it. Holt asked Trump a question, and some weird steam-of-consciousness ravings would come out of his mouth that were barely related to the question. So Holt would push the question a couple more times, and Trump would get more agitated and belligerent.

But in truth Lester Holt said very little during the debate, and for long stretches of time it was just the two candidates reacting to each other.

Michael Tomasky points out that there is plenty of ammunition left with which Clinton could destroy Trump. And he doesn’t even list it all. Here are just some of them:

Trump Foundation. By now you know all about this bogus enterprise, thanks to the great reporting of David Farenthold of The Washington Post. I would imagine there’s more coming, possibly having to do with the kinds of business relationships Trump had with the leading donors to the foundation (a ticket-scalper? Come on.). But even if there’s not more coming, there’s material aplenty already, from the serious (the apparent, and apparently illegal, self-dealing) to the comic (the two grandiose portraits of himself the charity spent tens of thousands of dollars to purchase).

But there’s more! A couple of days ago Josh Marshall wrote,

We now have clear evidence of self-dealing in the payouts made by the Foundation and as of yesterday pretty clear evidence that Trump has used the Foundation to avoid paying taxes on income. The combination could spell real legal trouble for Trump, possible even criminal penalties. In short, you’re not allowed to use a family foundation as a piggy bank or slush fund for tax avoidance and personal or business purposes. We’ve proceeded cautiously in what we know and what we don’t. We’ve also tried to be cognizant of the fact that this is an area of criminal law where intent is critical – which is to say, ignorance of the law is a defense. That said, one top former IRS official involved in oversight of tax exempt organizations told TPM, “Once you see a pattern of that kind of egregious nature, you start to think if whether there’s an appropriate criminal referral there.” Here’s the story.

And today, Talking Points Memo reports,

The New York attorney general’s investigation of the Donald J. Trump Foundation appears to have broadened to include new allegations of self-dealing by Trump that surfaced after the probe began, TPM has learned.

The town of Palm Beach, Florida, has provided documents to the New York Attorney General’s Office as part of the probe, a lawyer for the town confirmed to TPM on Wednesday. The documents relate to a legal dispute that Trump settled with the town using foundation money. The details of the 2007 Palm Beach case were first reported by the Washington Post last week. …

…New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had announced earlier this month, before the Washington Post’s reporting on the Palm Beach case, that his office had opened an investigation into Trump Foundation after it was reported that Trump had used foundation money to buy personal gifts for himself.

The contact with Palm Beach by the Attorney General’s Office suggests its probe had widened to include other alleged acts of self-dealing. The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment Thursday.

Oh, but wait. Remember Trump University? Tomasky writes,

Trump University. In a lifetime of scams too numerous to count and too appalling to rank, this may be Trump’s biggest scam of all. Many people lost their money and got nothing whatsoever out of it. There are depositions that have been made public in which Trump U. employees admit they were under instructions to give students a very hard sell and sometimes to lie to them. Then of course there’s the whole way that the states of Texas and Florida dropped their investigations of it, after donations from the…

… from the Trump Foundation! This is what happened in Florida:

Trump, who bragged during the primaries about controlling politicians through financial support, is facing greater scrutiny for a 2013 contribution from his foundation to a political group working to re-elect Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. The $25,000 donation came in just days after Bondi’s office said it was considering joining a New York-led investigation of Trump U. Florida ultimately decided against getting involved in the investigation

And this is what happened in Texas:

A few years earlier, Trump U. also caught the attention of the office of Texas’ then-Attorney General, Greg Abbott. In January 2010, his office opened an investigation into the school in response to complaints about deceptive business practices, and later in the year, the school effectively ended operations in the state altogether. Years later, when Abbott was running for governor, Trump made two donations to Abbott’s campaign, one for $25,000 and another for $10,000.

Hmmm. But wait, there’s more! Tomasky doesn’t even mention Newsweek‘s scoop, which is that one of Trump’s companies violated the U.S. embargo against Cuba!

Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval. But the company did not spend the money directly. Instead, with Trump’s knowledge, executives funneled the cash for the Cuba trip through an American consulting firm called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corp. Once the business consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump’s company—then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts—how to make it appear legal by linking it after the fact to a charitable effort.

Wow, that should cost Trump some support in Florida. Elsewhere, an anonymous plaintiff has re-filed her suit against Trump that claims he raped her when she was 13 years old. It’s not clear to me whether anything will happen with this suit before the election, but it’s remarkable so little is said about it. See also Snopes. That’s another one Tomasky left out. Tomasky also didn’t mention that U.S. Intelligence officials are still looking into ties between one of Trump’s advisers and the Kremlin.

Tomasky did go into Modelgate —

Modelgate. And speaking of undocumented workers, one of the better scoops of this season that failed to get the oxygen it deserved was this amazing report by James West in Mother Jones about how young female models in Trump’s employ were working in the country illegally and were treated worse than many people treat their dogs. Only one of these women talked to West on the record, but this is a story that would sicken the women watching the next debate, and the men with consciences, too.

Tomasky also mentioned Trump’s history of ripping off contractors and his plan to  round up and deport 12 million people, which certainly deserves more scrutiny.

Someday, Trump may actually regret he ever tried the running for president thing.