As Donald Trump sought to escalate his corruption allegations against Democratic nominee Joe Biden and turn around a presidential race in which he has been vastly outnumbered in polls and funding, the president of the United States was hit by news reports from a bank account in China that he never declared.
The account was controlled by Trump International Hotels Management, which paid local taxes in China, the New York Times reported Tuesday. This was one of three foreign accounts the publication found during an analysis of the president’s tax records; the other two were in Ireland and Great Britain. None of them were listed in the president’s public financial disclosures. A spokesman for the Trump Organization told the NYT that the China account was opened after an office was established there to “explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.”
Trump, who has refused to release his tax returns, had attacked Biden in recent days alleging corruption of the former vice president and his only surviving youngest son, Hunter Biden, over the latter’s business in Ukraine and China. He has based his attacks on claims in a news report in a conservative newspaper that other publications have not been able to verify. Critics have raised the possibility that the report is part of a disinformation campaign by Russia to influence the elections.
Biden has dismissed the accusations as a “smear campaign.”
Trump has been behind Biden in the polls – 8.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics poll average on Wednesday, which was an improvement over the double-digit deficit he faced a week ago. But the FiveThirtyEight weighted average held it steady below more than 10 points.
The president has also been massively funded. According to documents filed with the federal election commission on Tuesday, the Trump campaign had just $ 63.1 million in the bank at the end of September, compared to $ 177.3 million for Biden’s campaign.
The cash-strapped president’s reelection campaign was not the same as the barrage of hostile advertisements that already began from Biden’s campaign. Trump has had to count on free airtime through more in-person demonstrations and a host of interviews as a way to plug the hole.
One of those interviews didn’t go very well. Trump abruptly ended a White House session with a CBS 60 Minutes host on Tuesday and threatened to release his own recording to anticipate what went wrong ahead of the broadcast scheduled for Sunday.
Meanwhile, Biden has dropped out of the campaign to prepare for the third and final debate. Its former boss and President Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s most powerful and popular colporteur, will address a drive-in movie theater in Pennsylvania, a key state on the battlefield, on Wednesday.
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