Donald J. Trump’s 1995 income tax returns arrived at The New York Times through the mail.
It was Sept. 23, 2016. The presidential election was drawing near. At the headquarters of The New York Times, the investigative reporter Susanne Craig retrieved a manila envelope from her office mailbox. The return address said it was from the Trump Organization.
“My heart skipped a beat,” Ms. Craig recalled in a first-person article about her reporting.
“The envelope looked legitimate,” Ms. Craig wrote. “I opened it, anxiously, and was astonished. Inside were what appeared to be pages from Mr. Trump’s 1995 tax records, containing detailed figures that revealed his tax strategies.”
The return address was fake. But the photocopies inside proved to be genuine. There were only three pages, but they offered enough information for Ms. Craig and David Barstow, Russ Buettner and Megan Twohey to report on Oct. 1 that Mr. Trump had declared a $916 million loss in 1995, a deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.
The Trump campaign denounced their scoop but never disproved it; it threatened legal action but never took any. Ms. Craig donated the documents to the Museum at The Times. And though The Times’s confidential tips line is now her primary source for over-the-transom leads, she still checks the snail mailbox. Every day.
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