Donald and the Trump Family Take Over $600 Million from U.S. Taxpayers
On This Day In 2016
Note: Today's OTDI is lengthier than most. But, please bear with us: in some ways, it's among the more important of our 366 entries.
Virtually all of the info in today's newsletter comes from a NYT article published OTDI 2018. "Based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records...(their piece is) one of the longest investigative articles ever published in The Times." Their analysis of the Trump Family finances revealed that much of the Trump origin story is a painstakingly-fabricated lie, and that the Family likely cheated U.S. taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars. For their work, reporters Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, and David Barstow were awarded the Pulitzer Prize, journalism's top honor.
So much of Donald Trump’s appeal to the MAGA crowd stems from their admiration that he’s a "self-made success story." Well, okay, maybe not fully “self-made” because, as Trump himself often notes, he received a “small loan” from his father of $1 million to get his start. But, still, “I built what I built myself,” he brags.
Hmmm, is that actually what happened?
There’s a saying, often attributed (but probably erroneously) to Hitler, Goebbels, and Nazi leadership that if you make your lie so monstrously big, no common person will believe it’s a lie because no common person could even dream that somebody would invent that. The depths of an evil man's depravity aren’t within the bounds of common understanding.
Trump, who allegedly has kept Hitler’s writings by his bedside*, appears to have exploited this common human character flaw in order to coast through his life and career of corruption, theft, and lies.
So, one showstopping finding from their investigation was that Trump and his siblings actually received well over one billion dollars from their parents. Not one Million like Donald says, but one Billion.
And, as the NYT uncovered, “much of this money came to Trump through dubious tax schemes…including instances of outright fraud.”
Donald himself received at least $514 million (in today's dollars) from his father's real estate empire.
Not only did Donald and the Family receive enormous amounts, they were able to retain it by deploying suspect schemes.
“Helped by a variety of tax dodges,” they continue, including "a pattern of deception and obfuscation that repeatedly prevented the I.R.S. from taxing large transfers of wealth to (Donald and his siblings)," the Trumps avoided paying at least half a billion dollars in taxes on those funds. That’s well over $600 million in today’s dollars which they essentially took from U.S. taxpayers.
Not only does that make Donald not “self-made,” it also makes him one of America’s truly biggest losers. He squandered that gift several times in bankruptcy (thereby cheating creditors out of money he owed them). And, other studies have shown that if he simply had kept his gifted billion in the stock market, he would be worth far more – and have created far more jobs – than he is today.
Here are six intriguing details:
"All told, The Times documented 295 distinct streams of revenue Fred Trump created over five decades to channel wealth to his son (Donald.)" A far cry from a "small $1MM loan" upon which the monstrously-false Trump Myth is centered.
One of the more colorful ways Trump’s Family slipped Donald some money, while avoiding traditional reporting requirements, was this: Once, when Donald was on the verge of running out of cash again, they sent a bookkeeper to one of his casinos to buy $3.5MM of casino chips…and then presumably throw away the chips. Presto, a $3.5MM Trump Family gift which doesn’t get shown to the government as a gift or a loan or an investment. (Generally, it’s good to be a casino owner! But, despite this scheme, Donald still eventually managed to drive his casino into the bankruptcy). Btw, New Jersey courts later ruled this scheme to be an illegal loan.
Here’s another scheme: Taxes are due on gifts exceeding $18,000. So at one point, Fred gifted Donald with 25 apartment complexes (not 25 apartments, but 25 apartment complexes.) He listed that gift as being worth $41.4 million. So, taxes were payable on $41,382,000 of that. However, banks had that same real estate on the books at nearly $900MM. So, by lying about their value to the government, Donald avoided paying taxes on nearly $860 million of what he received. “They play around with valuations in extreme ways,” noted a tax expert to the NYT. The statute of limitations may have passed on those. But, of course tax fraud did get the Trump Organization convicted for 17 felonies in 2022; and Trump himself was found liable for fraud in ’23, and ordered to pay hundreds of millions in fines.
So once he was gifted his hundreds of millions from his family, through dubious means, how did he invest them? Often, of course, through even more dubious means. For example: His first notable project was to build the Grand Hyatt hotel near Grand Central Terminal. The project was mired in controversy, but eventually got pushed through, in part because Donald submitted deceptive paperwork. Not only were the approvals for the project based on Donald's lie, but he also managed to get himself a $160 million tax break from New York City via his dishonesty. (Gotta wonder: If Trump supporters truly understood this about their guy, would it undercut their support, or would it strengthen it?)
Donald and his Family created a "company" which they called "All County Building Supply & Maintenance." It seems the sole purpose of the company, which existed only on paper, was to be "a vehicle to siphon cash from Fred Trump's empire" by padding invoices and creating a stream of untaxed gifts. Btw, in keeping with the Trump Family history of screwing their tenants, they used these techniques to "justify higher rent increases in rent-regulated buildings, records show."
In their debate last month, Kamala Harris noted that Donald had received $413 million from his Family. That was indeed the figure reported by the NYT. But, that had been converted to 2018 dollars; in today's dollars, it's $514MM.
* We've often noted that Trump is reported to be either unable or unwilling to read. These allegations about the Hitler book, which came from Donald's own wife, were made in 1990, back before Trump's current mental infirmities had begun.