Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author of biographies including the Clintons and the Kennedys. Here he reports on President Trump's controversial choice for U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Oppenheimer's latest book, 'The Kardashians: The True, Untold Story' will be published later this year.

President Trump's billionaire choice to be the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain could have major confirmation trouble because he once got caught hiding some of his fortune in an offshore tax haven, and became the target of a U.S. Senate probe, and the Internal revenue Service.

New York Jets owner, heir to the Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid fortune and longtime republican fundraiser Robert Wood 'Woody' Johnson IV's presidential appointment must first be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

But it was a senate committee in 2006 that issued a shocking report about rich people sheltering their money from taxes in offshore accounts.

And Woody Johnson was a central figure in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations probe into 'crooked tax havens that had cost the U.S. Treasury as much as $300 million in revenue,' according to the sharply worded 397-page report, entitled: 'Tax Haven Abuses: The Enablers, the Tools, and Secrecy.'

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New York Jets owner Woody Johnson (pictured above at Trump Tower on December 5) has been tapped as Donald Trump's choice for U.S. ambassador to Great Britain

Trump and Johnson have been in the same social circles for years. Pictured above, the men with their wives, Melania Trump (left) and Suzanne Ircha (right) at Johnson's 60th birthday party in 2007

The document revealed Johnson's involvement along with that of a few other billionaires.

According to the report, Johnson 'took advantage' of such a tax haven - the Isle of Man, a small, self-governing British Crown.

With a population of some 88,000, the relatively obscure island in the Irish Sea had no capital gains tax, or inheritance tax. Its primary economy was offshore-banking.

Trump's appointment of Johnson comes at a time when the newly-elected president is being criticized for failure to release his own tax returns, a long-standing tradition among new presidents.

And questions have been raised about the president's overseas investments and purported business dealings in Russia, which he has denied.

As I revealed in my 2013 book, 'Crazy Rich: Power, Scandal, and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson Dynasty,' Woody Johnson's money issues began in 2000 when he sought to buy the New York Jets football team.

In order to finance the more than $600 million deal, and to hopefully avoid paying 'hefty capital gains tax on the sale of stock holdings Johnson began looking for a creative way to write off a good part - or possibly even all - of Uncle Sam's tax bill as an expense of doing business.'

The grandson of one of the Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid and Baby Powder behemoth moguls, Johnson got in touch with his financial accountant at KPMG, a major audit, tax, and advisory business, part of the Quellos Group, a super hedge fund, headquartered in Seattle.

According to the senate subcommittee report, Woody asked his accountant to 'begin looking for ways to mitigate the capital gains tax on the securities sales he was planning.'

Johnson (above with Vice President Mike Pence at a Jets game in December) was caught hiding some of his fortune in accounts on the Isle of Man. He coughed up $17 million to settle

Johnson's company, the Johnson Company, with headquarters then in the Empire State Building, was characterized by the subcommittee's investigators as a 'large financial enterprise' where 'taxes are often considered an expense.'

Soon, Johnson decided to invest in a complex financial strategy involving what turned out to be 'sham stock transactions called portfolio investment transactions – known as POINT,' based on the Isle of Man, where the Quellos Group opened for business, according to the investigation.

Johnson would later claim no knowledge of anything illegal, or questionable.

Still, investigators asserted, he approved the deal. The probe turned up one email in which one of those involved declared, 'Ain't capitalism great!'

And another email stated, 'Now I just hope Woody doesn't get cold feet or have the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] select his return for audit.'

According to investigators, the Quellos deal was 'an opportunity to purchase a tax loss for cash.'

The probe, which lasted a year, turned up emails that made no mention 'of a concern on the part of Mr. Johnson or his representatives over the profit-making aspects of the transaction.'

Johnson's ex-wife accused him of abandoning their troubled party girl daughter, Casey (above with Johnson), who tragically died when she was just 32 years old

At the time of her death, Casey was in a relationship with TV reality star Tila Tequila (right), who was a staunch Trump supporter throughout the recent election. She's pictured above making a Nazi salute with two men at a white nationalist rally and celebration supporting Trump's win

Johnson cooperated with the senate investigators and submitted to an interview by the subcommittee staff in July 2006.

But, according to the report, his memory failed him regarding details of the transactions, and asserted that he only acted on the advice of his trusted advisors.

He claimed that his lawyers had advised him that the Quellos deal was 'consistent with the tax code.'

But that's not how the IRS saw it and Johnson 'had to quietly settle-up with Uncle Sam,' as I reported in Crazy Rich. He agreed to pay 100 percent of the tax due, about $17 million, plus interest.

At the time the subcommittee report was released, The Washington Post reported Johnson's involvement under the headline, 'Tax Shelters Saved Billionaires a Bundle.'

And noted that the investigation 'details how these wealthy, politically connected people ducked hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payments by using secretive corporations and trusts on the Isle of Man.'

Beyond The Post, the scandal received little if any major media coverage at the time.

Casey's mother and Johnson's ex-wife, Sale (pictured right with Casey), says that Johnson didn't know how to act around his daughter

One story in The Post had the headline, 'As Senate Hearing Shows, Cheaters Ever Prosper,' and Post reporter Steven Pearlstein, who covered the subcommittee hearings, noted, 'Robert Wood Johnson IV, philanthropist and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune' wasn't given 'an old-fashioned grilling.'

When Johnson's name surfaced in the report, the administrator of Jetinsider, an online forum about Johnson and his NFL team, wrote: 'Woody is a tax cheat! Another solid move by the great businessman Woody Johnson. Will this guy ever do anything the right way and own up to his responsibilities.'

In September 2010, Jeffrey Greenstein, of the Quellos Group, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and aiding in the filing of a false tax return in connection with the POINT.

He admitted that the purported tax shelters had cheated the IRS out of $240 million. He was sentenced to fifty months in prison.

One of those tax shelters was the one Woody Johnson - now awaiting confirmation as ambassador to Great Britain - had 'unsuccessfully bet on to save himself millions in taxes.'

Johnson is hoping his confirmation will go through, and that he'll be more successful as an ambassador than his Jets team had been in the 2016 NFL season.

The record of Gang Green, as the team is known, was dismal – winning just five and losing eleven.

Johnson's personal life has also been troubled.

In a series of candid and heartbreaking interviews, Johnson's first wife, New York and Florida socialite Sale Frey Johnson, claimed that Woody, 69, did nothing to help their blonde, breast-enhanced, bisexual heiress daughter as she scandalously spiraled out of control in a haze of Hollywood sex, drugs and rock n' roll.

Because of her scandalous lifestyle, her father cut off all ties for some five years with the first of his three daughters from his marriage to Sale. The other two daughters are Jaime and Daisy.

The very troubled Sale Trotter Case 'Casey' Johnson was found dead on the morning of January 4, 2010, alone in a rented Beverly Hills cottage where she had been depressed through the Christmas and New Year holiday. She had stopped taking her insulin and was swigging an over-the-counter sleep remedy.

In the last couple of years of her life, Casey tried to build a bond with Woody, but failed.

Johnson remarried to Suzanne Ircha, in 2009. They have one son together, Robert Wood Johnson V (right with Suzanne)

When he learned Casey had died, Woody called it, 'The worst day of my life…There's no way to bring her back. I wish I could change it.'

The Los Angeles County coroner ruled that her 'natural death' was the result of 'diabetic ketoacidosis' – a complication of her diabetes, but there were whispers that her death was a suicide.

A private funeral was held in Princeton, New Jersey. She was buried next to two of Woody Johnson's younger brothers – Keith, who died of drugs, and Billy, killed in an auto accident, and said to have probably been under the influence.

The tragic life and death of Casey was just one of the horrific scandals to plague the Johnson dynasty. Through the years money and attendant greed has pitted Johnsons against Johnsons over trust funds, wills, divorce settlements, paternity and other familial issues.

There were drug addictions, alcoholism, overdoses, adultery, homosexuality, a suspected kidnapping, a murder plot, a shooting, tragic accidents, suicide, attempted suicide, and other mayhem, documented in Crazy Rich.

As Sale told me, 'There's been lots of things going on in the Johnson family that have been embarrassing…It's been a complicated family.'

Back in college at the University of Arizona, for instance, classmates and cousins told me that Woody was a stoner and a drinker.

Today he's lucky he's not crippled - or dead. In one serious incident, he was on the way to a party with friends - all were drinking, and when he took a break to urinate, he stepped backwards in the dark and fell off a cliff, breaking his back.

It took months of rehabilitation for him to walk again, and today he still walks with a very slight limp.

His ex-wife, Sale, described him back in those days as a 'party animal.'

And a close family friend, Dr. Ed Saltzman, Casey Johnson's pediatrician who brought her into the world, and who got to know Woody and Sale when they were still just dating, told me:

'Woody had habits that weren't necessarily approved by society,' suggesting that he had had an addictive personality. 'I know he did a lot of partying, and Sale put a stop to all of that…And he stopped the drinking – and I'm talking about heavy drinking…Sale had a lot to do with Woody growing up.'

With platinum businesses in New York, the staunchly republican Johnsons and the Trumps have always had close social ties.

After Woody and Sale were divorced - sources told me she received as much as $100 million in settlement in her 2001 divorce - it was Trump who introduced the former Mrs. Johnson, a Jewish native of St. Louis and a republican, to her future second husband, the African-American one-time football star and sportscaster Ahmad Rashad.

Trump played Cupid in introducing Sale to Rashad in 2005 when both were playing at Trump's newly opened Donald Trump National Golf Club in the New York suburb of Briarcliff Manor.