Taxing Questions: The Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which has been fighting President Trump to get hold of his tax information, suggested for the first time in a public filing yesterday that there are grounds to investigate the President and his businesses for tax fraud.

  The filing by the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., says that  news reports and public testimony that claim misconduct by  Trump and his businesses justify a grand jury inquiry into possible crimes, including tax and insurance fraud, and falsification of business records.

  The Manhattan DA has been fighting for more than two years to obtain eight years of the President’s tax returns. Trump’s lawyers say the subpoena for tax records is politically motivated.

  Trump has denounced the investigation as part of “the greatest witch hunt in history.”

Fill That Seat: Federal Appelate Court Judge  Amy Coney Barrett, who is reported to be on the short list to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, met with President Trump at the White House yesterday. Barrett is believed to be a certain vote against the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and against abortion rights. She clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia 22 years ago.

  Out there campaigning, former Vice President Joe Biden appears to be avoiding the court fight because it appears to be a non-motivator for voters. 

   Trump has said he will announce his nominee at the end of the week. Barrett and appeals court Judge Barbara Lagoa are among the top candidates. 

Viral News: A post on the Centers for Disease Control website that said the coronavirus is transmitted mostly through the air lasted only a few days before it was inexplicably taken down.

  The article talked about aerosols, tiny particles containing the virus that can stay airborne for long periods and travel further than six feet. The virus is spread through “respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes,” the CDC said in its guidance posted last Friday. 

  Yesterday after the post was removed, a posting said that the original had been only a draft message mistakenly posted before it was fully vetted. There has definitely been ideological politics mixed with the handling of the coronavirus, and this may be part of it, but we’ll see.

  This morning, the US is just shy of 200,000 coronavirus deaths at 199,890. 

  President Trump said at a campaign rally yesterday in Swanton, Ohio at which few people wore masks that the coronavirus “affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”

The Ellen Show: Television host Ellen DeGeneres returned to work yesterday with an apology, of sorts. “As you may have heard this summer, there were allegations of a toxic work environment at our show,” DeGeneres said. “And then there was an investigation. I learned that things happened here that never should have happened.” 

  Staff members had complained that they were subjected to racism, fear, and intimidation.

  The fish rots from the head. In one of those apologies in which she held her own responsibility at arm’s length, DeGeneres went on, “And I want to say, I am so sorry to the people who were affected. I know that I’m in a position of privilege and power. And I realized that with that comes responsibility, and I take responsibility for what happens at my show.”

The Bulletin Board: Two ordnance experts who worked locating unexploded bombs from World War II in the Solomon Islands were killed when they took a bomb home and it exploded in the house. The men were Australian and British. — President Trump claims that the dying wish of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to be replaced by the candidate who wins the November election is made up. “I don’t know that she said that, or if that was written out by Adam Schiff, and Schumer and Pelosi,” Trump said during an interview on “Fox & Friends” yesterday morning, referring to the top three Democratic leaders. — A Tibetan-born NY City police officer has been accused of reporting to the Chinese government on the activities of Chinese citizens in the New York area and collecting information about potential sources of intelligence in the Tibetan community. 

The Obit Page: Robert Gore, the inventor of Gore-Tex waterproof fabric that has made rain, snow, and all kinds of nasty weather bearable, has died at age 83.

  Gore was working for his father’s company when he was asked to find a new way to make plumber’s tape. Gore found that by pulling a material called PTFE, the polymer stretched 1000 times to create a microporous structure. The result was a fabric with billions of pores smaller than water drops, forming a waterproof but breathable surface that became known as  Gore-Tex.

Social Notes: The NY Post reports that Jax Taylor, 41, and wife Brittany Cartwright, 31, of the show “Vanderpump Rules” are expecting their first child and we admit that we’ve never heard of either of them.

Bring Sexy Back: A new book to be released Thursday says Britain’s Prince Andrew is a sex addict and “adventurous lover.” Author Ian Halperin, in his book “Sex, Lies and Dirty Money by the World’s Powerful Elite,”  writes that “One woman said he was a very daring lover: there were no limits to where he would go in bed … She told me, ‘Andrew rocked my world in the bedroom.’”

  Prince Andrew? Sexy? We put this in the same category as the belief that the television show “Schitt’s Creek” is funny.

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