Trump Is A Fraud

Last week was not a good week for President Trump. A New York Times deep dive into Trump’s taxes revealed that he is not the self-made man he claims to be and that he took place in fraud to avoid paying millions in taxes.

Trump is not a self-made businessman as he claims.

New York Times: “The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.”

This morning, Trump said it was “very well documented” how much money he got from his father. Indeed, Trump received the equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire.

President Trump: In light of the NYT investigation, I asked President Trump just now how much money he got from his father to get his start in business. He didn’t give a figure, saying instead: ‘That’s very well documented, very well documented.’”

New York Times: “But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.”

Much of the money Trump received from his father was structured to avoid taxation in ways that were possibly illegal.

New York Times: “Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children.”

The most fraudulent example of the Trump’s evading taxes was their creation of a company to funnel money from Fred Trump to his children.

New York Times: “All County’s main purpose, the Times found, was to enable Fred Trump to make large cash gifts to his children and disguise them as legitimate business transactions, thus evading the 55 percent tax.”

The company the Trumps set up to evade taxes was also used to raise rents on low-income renters.

New York Times: “Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.”

Editorial boards and experts noted Trump’s business “success” appeared to be a fraud all along and called for his tax returns.

Baltimore Sun Editorial: “All this can be horribly depressing to average Americans (AKA the ‘suckers’) who don’t stand to inherit hundreds of millions of dollars or have publicists and lawyers at their beck and call, or accountants devising elaborate schemes to shield them from shouldering their fair share of the taxes needed to pay and equip the military, finance the latest cancer research, protect the health of the nation’s air, land and water or address a multi-billion-dollar backlog of public infrastructure repair.”

USA Today Editorial: “Donald Trump, Even With All His Daddy’s Money, Is The Real Apprentice”

Washington Post Editorial: “The narrative of business brilliance upon which President Trump has based his political appeal now stands definitively debunked, like so many of the other myths he has woven about himself.”

The Republican Editorial: “The Trump real-estate empire is a sad, pathetic facade. And Donald Trump is the farthest thing possible from the personification of the American success story.”

Former Pulitzer Prize Winner David Cay Johnston: “We need to see Trump’s tax returns, and the books and records behind them, from this century. And if they show cheating, we need to enforce the laws Trump violated.”

Trump Chronicler Michael D’Antonio: “The wall of secrecy has now been breached, and what lies behind it seems to be proof that, at the very least, the reputation Trump claimed was a fraud all along.”

New York state and city officials have already opened investigations into the Trumps’ underpaid taxes and undue rent increases.

CNBC: “New York state tax officials are investigating allegations detailed in an exhaustive New York times investigation into Donald Trump and his family’s business dealings.”

New York Times: “New York City officials said on Thursday that they had joined state regulators in examining whether President Trump and his family underpaid taxes on his father’s real estate empire over several decades. The announcement came in response to an investigation published this week in The New York Times that showed how Mr. Trump had participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents.”

New York Times: “Another state agency is looking into whether tenants in Fred Trump’s rent-regulated apartments saw their rents unduly increased because the Trumps used the padded All County invoices to apply for rent increases, as The Times found. State regulations allow owners of rent-regulated buildings to apply for increases to recover the ‘actual and verified cost’ of some improvements to buildings, said Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal. The agency can refer cases of landlords found to be submitting false receipts to the state attorney general.”