Property documents reveal that Donald Trump has been listing higher values on his loan applications and lower values on his taxes, which is bank and tax fraud.
ProPublica got the documents and reported:
Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica.
….
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
More than a dozen tax and finance experts, presented with ProPublica’s earlier findings, also said they could not decipher a reason for the differences. As with Trump Tower, the discrepancies made the two properties — a skyscraper located at 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower near Columbus Circle — appear more profitable to the lender and less so to property tax officials.
Those discrepancies were “versions of fraud,†according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.
Trump appears to have been engaged in one of the most common fraud schemes that exist. Paul Manafort was charged with fraud for lying about his assets to get loans, and the IRS deals with people who try to cheat the system by rounding down the value of their assets every single year.
New York has been after Trump for decades for running this con, and the scheme is one of the many reasons why he is fighting so hard to prevent Congress and the public from ever seeing his tax returns. The statute of limitations is not up on any potential bank or tax fraud that Trump and his family committed.
Since this is the Trump Organization, the Trump family could face criminal charges if they are found to have been engaging in a fraud scheme. The Trump Organization (family) is under investigation in New York for the falsification of business records.
The possibility is growing that if Trump loses the 2020 election he could go from the White House to lock up in state prison.
Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Follow Jason Easley on Facebook
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
