Thread by @RobertMaguire_

For years, Trump inauguration officials have pushed back on reports of fraud and financial malfeasance by referencing a full, "clean" financial audit that they nevertheless refused to make public.

Well, we found the audit, and it doesn't help their case citizensforethics.org/trump-inaugura…

Journalists and watchdogs (myself included) have been asking the inaugural committee to provide the audit almost since it first filed financial records with the FEC, back in 2017, showing that it raised more than double any other past inaugural committee.

To my knowledge, the first official reference to the audit came from inauguration chairman and longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack in June 2017 to the Associated Press.

The audit we found was signed June 1, 2017 apnews.com/0756ba74804448…

Since then, Barrack and others have repeatedly used the audit to push back on a flood of allegations and reported criminal investigations into financial misconduct at the inauguration.

In December of last year, for example, in response to a report that federal prosecutors were investigating the inaugural committee for possibly selling administration access to donors and misspending funds, Barrack referenced—but wouldn't provide—the audit wsj.com/articles/trump…

At the same time, NBC cited a statement from the inaugural committee which stated that its "finances were fully audited internally and independently and are fully accounted" nbcnews.com/politics/donal…

They gave the same statement to ProPublica and WNYC in response to a report on internal concerns about self-dealing and overcharging on the part of the Trump's and their DC hotel propublica.org/article/trump-…

These are just a few of the instances where they used the audit as a talisman to ward off scrutiny, but here's the thing: It doesn't do any of that. All the audit did was essentially look to see if a broad financial statement prepared by the group matched its bank statements

So while the audit would look to see if payments to Trump properties were properly categorized and fairly represented in the financial statement, they would not weigh on propriety of such self-dealing or see if the payments were made at fair market rate

And the strange thing is that the audit doesn't even appear to satisfy the NY statutes that required they file these documents in the first place

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's just one of several possible compliance issues experts pointed out to us citizensforethics.org/trump-inaugura…