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Toilets, Taxes & Truth: Mazars Versus Trump and the Importance of Documentation

Bill Stierle • Mar 08, 2022

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In light of recent news surrounding Mazars’ termination of their relationship with the Trump organization, many now question the eligibility of decades worth of documentation. Donald Trump’s previous statements on the ineffectiveness of American toilets when it comes to flushing have also resurfaced and are being interpreted in a new light. Was Trump flushing documents down the drain? In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom unpack the news and share their thoughts on this revelation regarding the previous presidency. What are the next moves for both sides? Will the Trump organization turn this into a marketing opportunity? How will this affect Republicans and Democrats? What can we do to uphold the Record-Keeping act with better integrity? Answer these questions as you listen to their discussion.



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Toilets, Taxes & Truth: Mazars Versus Trump and the Importance of Documentation

Bill, I’ve got to tell you my head is spinning with all of the news that is going on. It's all about toilets, taxes, and truth. There’s so much to talk about. They are related in many ways in terms of communication.


Also, privacy and loyalty. We don't have to talk much about the setup because the rest of the news media is going to cover the setup. Let's drive down the center of the freeway here and keep our eyeballs up on how to communicate through a conversation about toilets, and how the need for accuracy and clarity regarding history means that whatever document that's created inside a government is recorded and placed in a spot for posterity.


That is good record keeping. There's not a lot of wiggle room about not good recordkeeping regarding government or business. Regarding our personal life, take your papers out of the backyard and burn them if you can get away with stuff because our free society allows a certain amount of flexibility that people are not watching over you 24/7.


There's no personal Recordkeeping Act that says, “You can't burn your own documents and erase your own videos.” It’s the National Recordkeeping Act that is at issue here with Donald Trump and the revelation from this book that's going to be coming out among other things that he would routinely tear up papers that were drafts of speeches, tweets, and all sorts of things. As president of the United States, the law says you are not allowed to do that.


You are not allowed to tear things up or flush things down the toilet.


I can hear Donald Trump's supporters saying, “That's ridiculous. He's going to tear things up.” I could see people rationalizing like, “The good speech that he gives, you don't want to have. The bad speech will be news out there. Why wouldn't you let him tear them up?” The thing is, Donald Trump knew before becoming president that there is this law, the National Recordkeeping Act because I saw him give a speech talking about it regarding Hillary Clinton and her 30,000 emails that she should have known better. There is this National Recordkeeping Act as Secretary of State that anything for the administration has to be preserved. He's on record in a pre-president speech or campaign speech saying he was well aware of the Recordkeeping Act.


Somebody can know about something and somebody can be an advocate for something. It’s a weird thing to say. The need for respect, self-worth or identity says, “This is for everyone else except for me.” Our brain will create this wobbly logic. Our mindset and language will allow us to justify because we are in the right. Why are we in the right? Why would the brain do such a thing and not take accountability?

It all comes down to one word, which is protection. We are like, “I want to protect myself worth, my identity, and my brand by making it about something other than me.” How do you speak to it? It seems like the president is having trouble with toilets, so he blames the toilets for not being able to flush fifteen times on national news. He's blaming a toilet for not doing what he would like it to do, which is flush papers. There's something wrong with the toilets.


This blew my mind. For our readers, there’s so much to understand. Bill remembered this from a couple of years ago with President Donald Trump in the office where he is on national TV multiple times complaining about the 1.6 gallons per flush toilets that don't flush and that we are wasting more water having to flush 10 or 15 times. Now that this revelation of Donald Trump dripping up documents and flushing them to try to destroy them has come out, that rant of his on national TV multiple times about this important problem that needs to be solved with our water in America. We don't have toilets that are doing the job right the first time makes so much sense.


He is transparent with his communication. If you watch the Anderson Cooper video, he is making fun of the craziness but the news media is not attaching it to the truth, which the truth is he was flushing documents that he did not want to be read with toilets, and blaming the toilets and sewage system for not being effective.


I'm sure the late-night comedians at the time like Anderson Cooper has this ridiculous skit that he does. The late-night comedians were also having a field there with this making fun of how big of a bowel movement does this guy has that he needs this industrial-strength toilet to get rid of it in one flush. There wasn’t anybody that considered there's something else going on there.


Can you imagine the White House staff at the time when he goes on TV with one of these rants from the Oval Office or wherever else he was in the White House saying this is a serious problem and we are going to have people look into it because you have to flush 10 or 15 times to get things to flush? That's not right. Can you imagine the staff thinking, “When they find out he's flushing official documents, what is that going to mean?” They are worried that the real story probably would come out.


What to do about it? They used to say that Ronald Reagan was a Teflon-coated President because nothing would stick to him, and then they would say Bill Clinton was a Teflon-coated President because nothing would stick to him. They figured out how to get things to stick to Hillary Clinton. For Donald Trump, you could throw anything but nothing is going to stick to him.


He’s slippery. They are supposed to be. Even when the Recordkeeping Act is so serious that even if there are conversations the president is having with people, there's supposed to be a stenographer that is present to document it. Donald Trump was notorious for trying to have conversations without the stenographer present. It’s not that the president shouldn't be able to have completely private conversations. They have to have completely private conversations at times.

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The thing to remember too is that, what creates Teflon? What creates people not sticking the listener's predisposition for their beliefs and biases so it prevents things from sticking? He gets through the first impeachment, and that gives him permission to do the second. He then does the second and gets impeached twice. The ten Republicans or whatever the number was for senators that could have voted to impeach and not have this person in the field of view because he can't run again. We are moving on. They had an off-ramp that would have been fine.


Their voters aren't going anywhere but in their minds, they think, “If we convict this guy, we become unpopular.” You don't become unpopular because your people have no place else to vote. They can't vote Democrats because you did such a good job of damaging their brand that they’ve still got to vote with you even though they could be mad that you voted their favorite guy out, the TV star. There’s some disappointment that the Profiles in Courage weren't sitting there to go like, “What is the long-term benefit for our party instead of the short-term benefit? We’ve got to hang in there with this guy and think we can make it work.” They still think they can make it work with him but they can’t.


It is amazing. Every day, there's another story coming out negative that you would think would cause more brand damage to Donald Trump and his organization. Let's go to taxes for a moment because that's another thing that's happened. The Trump Organization has an accounting firm, and I'm talking huge accounting firm because you can imagine how complex The Trump Organization taxes are. We have all been hearing about these taxes since before he was the president. He wouldn't release them because they were on audit and all that stuff.


The accounting firm, Mazars, one of the major national US top accounting firms, sent a letter to The Trump Organization's Chief Financial Officer on February 9th, 2022, and that letter came to light a few days later when Attorney General Letitia James for the Southern District of New York that's investigating The Trump Organization, filed new court documents to explain why she wanted to get Donald Trump and his adult children under oath. That's why this all came out.


The Mazars letter told The Trump Organization that Donald Trump's financial statements from the years 2011 to 2020 could not be relied upon to be accurate and that it should tell anyone relying on those documents, banks, for example, that they were not reliable. It went on to say that there was now a non-waivable conflict of interest with The Trump Organization that meant Mazars was not able to provide new work products for the organization.


This is one of the largest accounting firms in the country firing The Trump Organization as a client, saying they are not going to work for them anymore. That's huge news. You would think it devastated The Trump Organization. I certainly thought it devastated The Trump Organization when I read it, and then, you were like, “Maybe not so much.”

That's the challenge. It would have been damaging if it didn't give them an additional legal spin to spin it back in their direction of what had been damaging. The challenge with writing things legally is that you are writing things so that they don't get exposure to it because if they get exposure and get involved in a countersuit, they can't support the district attorney.


There's nothing in the letter to allow The Trump Organization to countersue the accounting firm for defamation. There's nothing fully in there. The Trump Organization probably will file. They will start badmouthing Mazars like, “They are a terrible accounting firm. They aren't the best anyway. We don't know why we went with them.” What they are going to do is they are going to start trying to shift the brand damage to Mazars.


It's going to be, “This organization is not very good.” They are going to start taking a stick and start swinging it at Mazars so that the damage does not hit on to The Trump Organization because it's the shiny hotel that’s painted in gold and it’s the best place ever. What does this letter mean? You had mentioned that George Conway had mentioned some of those things. It might help our audience to get a hold of what that truth is to get us away from the biases and the different beliefs that are projected in our direction.


Lawyer George Conway is the husband of Kellyanne Conway who's was in the Donald Trump administration for quite a while. He interpreted the letter for non-lawyers in a series of tweets. He said, “Decision regarding the financial statements equals they are false because you lied. The totality of the circumstances equals the district attorney is serious about this going after to The Trump Organization,” and then this, “Non-waivable conflict of interest equals we are now on the team district attorney,” and the last one is, “Not able to provide new work product equals sorry, we are not going to jail for you, Trump Organization.”


That's what George Conway put out, which is probably pretty darn accurate. You make the real point that that's George Conway’s practical interpretation of what's behind the letter but Mazars didn't say that. Had they come out and said any of those things like, “You lied,” then they would find themselves on the other side of a defamation suit in a hurry.


George Conway went all the way to this extreme, and then, Mazars was already on this other extreme here saying, “We are not going to get countersuit. We are not going to get this. We are not going to deal with that level of litigation because we don't want to pay these guys any money. We are just going to try to see if we can dismiss them by firing and telling them we can't deliver the quality of work that we would like to deliver. We are going to try to get out of this thing because it's such a mess.” The next thing is that if they come out and be a point on, then all of a sudden, that's what they get.


George Conway could say it over here and then people can call him a rhino. They would be like, “He's a Never Trumper. That’s why he's trying to be this way. He's not our identity,” because even though he's married to somebody that supports that identity, he's not that identity. On the other side of the fence, what is a letter that Mazars could have written that also could have been a little bit more on point yet compassionate for the activities that Donald Trump and the organization did? How can you write a compassionate letter and still not get sued?

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That is what’s called in Bill Stierle’s mediation world as you want to step into the uncomfortable. You’ve got to step into saying, “The Trump Organization was looking to secure cashflow for the organization, so they chose to report these numbers. They were also looking to support the organizations’ net worth by reporting these numbers.” What you do is you are stepping into the good reason why they did it, and then The Trump Organization would say, “These are the good reasons why we did it,” not knowing that they are walking down the admission of the illegal activity.


They are slowly walking off the plank of the ship.


Regrettably, what they wrote was legally sound and protective but it didn't allow us to get to what the truth was by stepping into it. It’s not as harsh as George Conway did but compassionately to, “It seems like they took advantage of these laws and everybody gave them a week and a nod, and let them do it. We are not going to represent them because our need for integrity,” what's missing in that is, “Our need for integrity as an organization will not allow us to work with them.” Can you imagine if the word integrity was in that letter? It would be like, “As an organization, our need for integrity will not allow us to support this client.”


It would be an interesting way to backhandedly say The Trump Organization lied without saying it, because you are saying, “Our need for integrity will not allow us to do this.” We are not saying that they did anything specific but them saying that would be quite something. The Trump Organization latched on to that letter and some statements within it. I thought this was laughable. I thought it was crazy. You said, “No, that makes some sense,” when you heard about it but I was like, “The Trump Organization tried to spin this letter as a complete and total exoneration.”


The amplification of perception and perspective is something that you've got to also step into. It seems like The Trump Organization would like to see this one point they put out as an exoneration. Regrettably, we feel doubtful and skeptical that that is the range of errors that are inside their reporting. Notice that I'm taking a bucket of water and putting it on. I created the emotion that I would like the reader to experience.


We feel doubtful and skeptical that this one truth they are pointing out will line up or match with the other truths that we found that are not in alignment with our need for integrity or staying in alignment with the Tax Code. Notice that I introduced something, which is staying in alignment with the Tax Code. I didn't say you broke the rule. It's just not in alignment with the Tax Code. You can't get defamation because were they in alignment with the Tax Code? They weren’t.


That’s also very hard to prove either way, which gives Mazars an out, as one NBC legal analyst put it, Orwellian doublespeak, with The Trump Organization trying to say that Mazars said they have not concluded that the various financial statements as a whole contained material discrepancy and that the work Mazars performed in accordance with professional standards that they did that. You have often said to me that out of 20 statements in a letter like this, there could be 19 of them that could be negative and potentially dangerous. The Trump Organization will latch onto the one that's complimentary and amplify that to diminish the impact of the rest.

The amplification is an order to capture and corral biases and beliefs of team Donald Trump, the MAGA Movement, and the new identity of the Republicans, which is, “I'm trying to keep the people I want in my tent, and I don't want to lose that 20%.” This distraction that we are sitting with, and this is going to sound so upsetting, can lull to sleep the voters from the Democratic party to say, “Why do I need to vote? Clearly, this guy is lying and there's no way the Republicans are going to ever vote for this guy during the midterms or any of their people during the midterms. Look at all the lies.”


The belief that they have is no one is going to vote for these people. The belief that would be very helpful for them to engage in is it's a dog fight, and they need to show up and be amplified. That is where the thing is that they need to be on full-out press and go on like, “Firing Mazars is helping the Republican vote.” The reason why is because the faithful are going to defend their leader. They are coming out in droves to defend him against Mazars and everyone else voting. Isn’t this the most unsettling thing?


It's completely unsettling. It’s bizarre.


It's the way the limbic brain works. It’s like, “I am going to protect my identity and point of view. I'm going to protect the thing and person that I have invested in that has lifted my spirits and caused me to fight against the wrong and deal with those evil people on the other side that want to waste money.” Why don't we talk about wasting money instead of that other thing? If you go to a city and distribute T-shirts about a pro football team for free and everybody is wearing the same T-shirt, that didn't cost anything. What it bought was loyalty, inspiration, and engagement.


This is what Mitch McConnell and Republicans are fighting against. They are so sick of all this drama, theater, and these revelations that keep coming out. This whole thing about Donald Trump flushing the documents down the toilet is not helping Mitch McConnell. He's fighting against this. He's trying to get establishment-type Republicans and not Donald Trump loyalists to run in districts around the country, and they are not doing it. He's losing that battle.


On the one hand, from a certain perspective, it’s shocking. It's interesting to hear your perspective but it makes sense because it's about loyalty. It's about, “He's your guy.” The funniest thing that I have seen that shows how far we have come in this country, and I mentioned in this episode about Donald Trump speaking on television as he's campaigning for president back in 2015. Going all out on Hillary Clinton for the 30,000 emails that were gone and talking about the national archives Recordkeeping Act that she should know.


Her husband was president, and she was Secretary of State. He was like, “You have to preserve all your records. You can't just delete your emails.” He knew the law, and now, he and all his supporters are going to try to excuse him ripping up draft documents and flushing them down the toilet. Hillary Clinton is trolling Donald Trump. She's got these hats and coffee mugs that say, “But Her Emails.” She's on social media trolling him and trying to label him as a hypocrite. It's funny but it’s not going to work.

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What would work is a hat that says, “Really, integrity counts?” It's the counter-message of the value he's running over. Also, a red hat with, “Recordkeeping or have you had enough fairness yet? Have you had enough respect yet?” The communication challenge is that he uses every law case as a marketing opportunity. Every time he is in the news, he is going to amplify and point out the partial truth that is in that accusation that it's not true because then he gets to amplify the marketing message.


It would probably be more effective if Hillary Clinton put on a hat that said, “Make America flush again,” because Donald Trump has made such a big issue about the water and the toilets, and now we know why. I'm sure the Republicans are like, “How are we going to win with all this craziness going on and with our party divided?” There is quite a divide within their party.


It's not enough to affect the local things yet. I feel curious because this creates so much diffusion in this short attention span world that we are talking about toilets, recordkeeping, and national archives, and their bias is like, “Sometimes my toilet gets stuck, too.” That's their bias. They are saying, “I agree with the president. There's not enough water that allows the toilet to be flushed,” and they are not even seeing the importance of recordkeeping because it's not in their worldview.


It is a flat Earth mindset. It's like, “This is the only way I could see the world because this is all I can see the world as.” We’ve got to remember that that point of view still needs empathy to it because it's their point of view. It's like the guy can't do anything wrong because he's rich, successful, confident, bully, and gets what he wants.


I do think it's important to understand that because understanding that is the only way to cut through it all. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.


This one is important. If we take a moment to communicate in a way that gets us back to our primary values of integrity and respect for America. Respect for what it means to have one vote per one person, how to create equality under the law and, “These are the laws we agree to and want to stick with, and if some of the laws are bad, we want to rewrite those to get back to this mutual respect and fairness that we all share here in America,” it will go a lot better. That's the hope that we can get the North Star back up, so we can start watching it and start steering the ship in the right direction.


That would be great. Thanks so much.


Thanks, everybody.


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