Late Night Host Seth Meyers Accuses Donald Trump of Tax Cheating

Seth Meyers accused Donald Trump of cheating on his federal taxes in an Instagram post Wednesday, tying the claim to his Late Night political commentary series “A Closer Look.”

The post read “Trump cheated on his taxes” and was tagged with #ACloserLook. That hashtag points to a regular segment on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Meyers’ NBC show. The format has been part of the program since its early years. It runs near the top of most episodes: Meyers takes a specific news story, works through clips and context, and gives his own analysis. The segment can run anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. It’s covered Trump’s record frequently over the show’s run.

Meyers has been at the Late Night desk since 2014, taking over from Jimmy Fallon. Before Late Night, he spent over a decade at Saturday Night Live as head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor, a role he shared with Amy Poehler for several years. He arrived at Late Night with a noticeably more political approach than most of his network peers. “A Closer Look” became the main vehicle for that. The segment built a real following during Trump’s first term. Political commentary was drawing strong viewership to late-night television in those years, and Meyers leaned into it.

Trump’s taxes have been a contested subject in American politics for years. The New York Times published a landmark investigation in 2020 built on two decades of the former president’s federal tax returns. The Times reported years of significant losses and accounting strategies that reduced his federal tax payments dramatically in certain years. That investigation won a Pulitzer Prize and set off a long wave of follow-up coverage.

Then in late 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud by a New York jury. Trump himself was not personally charged in that case. The conviction involved financial practices at the company he’d founded and controlled for decades. Congressional Democrats had also waged a years-long legal fight to access Trump’s personal returns. The Supreme Court eventually cleared the way. The returns were published in late 2022, adding detail to the public record but producing no additional criminal referrals specifically tied to the tax documents.

Meyers didn’t detail the specific basis for his allegation in the Instagram caption. His statement was brief and direct. The full argument would presumably come out in the segment itself. Late Night airs on NBC and its content is available on the network’s streaming platform.

Tax scrutiny of Trump has been a durable feature of American political coverage for years. Meyers has been one of its more persistent voices in entertainment. The short Instagram post fits into that longer pattern.

The post collected around 3,100 likes on Instagram.

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