Elections

Yale Law Scholar Calls For Someone To Break The Law And Leak Trump’s Tax Returns [AUDIO]

Steve Guest Media Reporter
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On Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast, senior research scholar at Yale Law School Emily Bazelon called for someone to break the law and leak Donald Trump’s tax returns.

In the July 28th edition of the podcast, “The ‘Bunch of Malarkey’ Edition,” Bazelon, along with CBS’s “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson and David Plotz closed the show with a discussion of Trump’s tax returns.

Plotz said,  “I want to close with just an observation. I find it actually amazing that there hasn’t been an IRS, some IRS official who is like, ‘I’ll go to jail’ who has just like stolen the Trump tax returns and released them. I wonder if they have them locked down in some special way… I’m just shocked that no one has tried to get those things out in the world.”

Agreeing with Plotz, Dickerson replied, “Right and that you can actually hide anything like that. It’s also not just the IRS, it’s whoever Trump’s tax–”

“Right, his tax preparers, right.” Plotz added.

“Right. And that’s a big firm with lots of people who could potentially you know, in theory get access to them. It’s just surprised [sic] anything can be hidden for that long in today’s modern life,” Dickerson said.

Plotz added, “You would never have a job again and you would probably go to prison is the big problem with it.”

Bazelon, a senior research scholar at Yale and staff writer at New York Times Magazine then offered her view.

“I don’t know,” Bazelon lamented. “Don’t discourage people from trying. Maybe this is our like listen up moment.”

Then in an attempt to damper her call for illegal activities, Bazelon said, “No, I guess that’s not a good thing to advocate for not inside the IRS but if some whistleblower inside the firm–”

“Look at you. You’re encouraging people to break the law,” Dickson commented. Just like Trump was “encouraging the Russians to release emails now you’re encouraging people to break the law. We’re descending into lawlessness.” (RELATED: Trump: I Hope Russia Is Able To ‘Find’ Hillary’s 30,000 Deleted Emails [VIDEO])

Plotz then asked Bazelon, “Yeah, would you encourage some lawyer to break an attorney-client privilege just to do your bidding?”

“I mean, I’m a journalist, we like leaks,” Bazelon said. “We don’t like, we don’t usually go around completely judging people. The line between the leaker and the whistleblower on this one could be thin.”

“Fair point, Plotz added.

LISTEN (Begins at 48:30):

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