On Tuesday the New York Times published an expose on the Trump family fortune. In the article they explain how Fred Trump, President Trump’s father, who is now deceased, avoided paying taxes, how the President himself received more than his stated, “$1 million loan from his father (“I had to pay him back with interest!”)” and how Fred Trump would recuse President Trump financially from failing business venture after failing business venture.
In another piece published on Monday at The New York Times, it wasn’t simply President Trump that benefited from these schemes, his siblings also benefited. In the follow-up article the Times explains the four ways that Fred Trump made his children richer.
- Ground Lease: Fred Trump not only made his son a salaried employee, he also made him a “property manager, landlord, consultant, and banker.”
- The Family Mortgage: Fred Trump provided payment for a car, “money for his first Manhattan offices,” while also giving money to buy stocks, among other things.
- GRAT: It is said by The Times, this was President Trump’s biggest payday from his father, in 2004, they sold their fathers empire, with the President’s cut being “$177.3 million or 236.2 million in today’s dollars.”
In yet another follow-up The New York Times gives the 11-takeaways from the investigation into the Trump family finances.
In the original in-depth expose the Times says they based their investigation on reviewing public documents along with a “vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records,” the article also explains that “at more than 13,000 words one of the longest investigative articles ever published in The Times — offers the first comprehensive examination of the inherited fortune and tax dodges that guaranteed Mr. Trump a gilded life.” The expose does not address President Trump’s current finances or business dealings.
A lawyer for President Trump, Charles J. Harder, released a statement, after the Times’ request for President Trump’s input on the story was declined, in the statement Harder calls the allegations in the piece, “100% False and highly defamatory.”
Robert Trump, President Trump’s brother also released a statement that the Times published in full: “Our dear father, Fred C. Trump, passed away in June 1999. Our beloved mother, Mary Anne Trump, passed away in August 2000. All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid. Our father’s estate was closed in 2001 by both the Internal Revenue Service and the New York State tax authorities, and our mother’s estate was closed in 2004. Our family has no other comment on these matters that happened some 20 years ago, and would appreciate your respecting the privacy of our deceased parents, may God rest their souls.”
President Trump weighed in on the article via tweet @ 8:53 a.m. calling it a “a very old, boring and often told hit piece.”
Time value of money =’s inflation.
On Tuesday in light of the expose into the Trump family’s “dubious” tax reporting The Wall Street Journal reported that, “The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance,” has said they will be reviewing the “allegations made in the New York Times piece.”
In a statement via the Washington Post, New York State Department of Taxation and Finance spokesman James Gazzale said, “The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the [Times] article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation.”
As a reminder Attorney General of New York, Barbara Underwood, “filed a suit against President Trump and his three kids,” as the News Blender reported in June, “the suit,” came “after a two year investigation that was started by the Attorney General’s office, in June of 2016, into President Trump’s charitable foundation, the Donald J. Trump Foundation.”
