General was saying, false misrepresentations. that the appraisal that came out of material overstated the value of the seven springs property by tens of millions of dollars. and even a page, and guess what. they submit it to the irs as part of this something that reduces mr. trump s tax liability by three point $5 million. he was able to reduce his taxable income by that much because of what the attorney general is saying is a lot of false information that was given to the appraisers, led by eric trump. also, the irs has been referred to them, it s hard to see they don t see interest in following this. other people have written about it. but the granular, the details that we knew about it, but to read the point it s almost a kind of forensic examination of what s going on. i know what you did would less information i m eager to see what you gonna do this information. suzanne craig, new york times investigative reporter, it s really good to have you on set like nights like this. i really appreciate your time. thank you for being here. we have more ahead this
Reporter, we usually, a lot of stories take different components to piece it together. sometimes you have one in the case of 2020. we had a huge volume of his tax documents. and other stories we have a lot of component pieces. and in 2018 we did and we were able to show because we had bank statements and we had financial statements. we were able to show a fraud. they have statements. they have interviews from people, embarrass across a huge number of entities from the accountants to bankers. i was reading page after page. it s full color. yeah. full spectrum. is there a property that struck you as the most egregious in terms of asset inflation and fraud? the asset inflation. it was striking to see just the percentages, some of them are over 1,000. jupiter is one.
Involved and he knew that the projections that they had and that they were giving to appraisers were not feasible. secondly, they failed to inform the appraisers of the restrictions. they pushed the appraisers to do other things. they falsely informed the appraisers about other things. like this is like i m reading this list. they being implying the trump organization including eric trump. right. then the appraisal, resulted because of what the attorney general is saying are these false misrepresentations that the appraisal that came out of it materially overstated the value of the seven springs property by tens of millions of dollars. you turn the page and guess what? they submitted to the irs as part of this something that reduced mr. trump s tax liability by $3.5 million. i mean he was able to reduce taxable income because of what the attorney general is saying is a lot of false information that was given to the appraisers led
Separately, there was lawsuits from the nation. so, they then went and they decided that they would make a charitable contribution in order to get a charitable contribution which is great for your taxes. and here, it says he points out that air trump was very involved. he knew that the projections that they had in that they were giving two appraisals were not feasible. secondly, it says here that they failed to inform the appraisers on the restrictions. they pushed the appraisers to do other things. they falsely informed the appraisers about other things, like, this is like, i m just reading this list. they being, implying the trump organization, including eric trump. right. and then it says the cushman appraisal, was assaulted because of what the attorney general was saying, false misrepresentations. that the appraisal that came out of material overstated the value of the seven springs property by tens of millions of dollars. and even a page, and guess
Million. trump said his69 apartment was worth almost double that seven years thago. nice try, donald trump. and then there is trump s florida beach club, mar-a-lago. to get tax breaks, he signed on to restrictions on what could and could not be done with that property which included turning night real estate. even under those reinstructions, the club is worth a cool $75 million. but when it came time to assess the value as one of his assets, trump pretended none of those restrictions existed and the whole place could be developed and sold for residential use. he said mar-a-lago is worth not $75 million, but $739 million. literally 10 times its value. this investigation revealed that donald trump engaged in years of illegal conduct to inflate his net worth to achieve, to deceive banks and the people of the great state of new york.e
They were inflating that asset by huge amounts. he bought it, i think, in $5 million. the jupiter golf club. less than a year later, values the same property at $62 million. right. those sort of numbers. and when you re doing appraisals and i ve learned this just, you know, over the years having covered him, there is a language. i ll give a charitable donation, you can go high. that is code for go low. you don t want to pay the taxes on that. so there is an understanding and i think there is leeway in what you can do. but some of this stuff is off the charts. 1100% is not normal. no. do you feel okay. so when we re talking about this lawsuit, it is centrally about donald trump. but what makes this different and perhaps more damming for
Of the documents seized from his club are his personal property. and if the fbi found anything classified in, there he declassified it when he was president, even though he has n record of ever having done thato trump got a lower court judge who he appointed to agree a speciale master should go thror all the documents. and in a ruling that was widely ridiculed, he said while the special master is going through the documents, the justice department is not allowed to look at the classified documents or to use them in a criminal investigation into trump having thein documents at his beach cl in the h first place. tonight, thee judges on the 11th court of appeals brushed about a thak lower court judge and said that, yes, the justice department can indeed have 5:00 tes to those classified documents afterss all. the judge is right in their opinion. for our part, we cannot discern why plaintiff trump would have an individual interest in or
Seven springs property. which they said to quote millions in tax benefits for the former president. ivanka herself is directly references there are fraudulent documents passed along to deutsche banc, a relationship that they allege she managed. the trumps and their spokesperson have responded, andrea. essentially calling the allegations baseless and saying they will be vigorously will be defended. they ve raised something they raised previously in this particular litigation and in the lawsuit against the new york attorney general. it was her promise during the course of her candidacy, to go back to trump, that they say, shows or proves at least that she has a tainted approach here. now, look, suzanne craig and a number of other others have dutifully covered the president s financials and have pointed out prior inconsistencies in what he s done. but this is the first accounting at least if we re to believe what james office has put
Over by cohen to congress. they re now in the hands of congress. we believe these financial statements have already been through the hands of the fbi and therefore they have been seen by federal prosecutors. we ve also now got cohen s blunt under ocean assertions as to what those financial documents were used for. if deutsche bank is now handing over documents to the democratic-controlled congressional committees, then presumably we will soon know if michael cohen was right in his testimony yesterday. and if these documents were in fact used in a loan application to deutsche bank or if they were used with insurance companies or if they were used with any other financial institutions. i mean, clearly there appears to be something wrong with that 2012 financial statement. clearly that is not a $291 million property. as nice as it may seem. i say that it s not a $291 million property not because i can tell at a glance what a property is worth. i say that because that s what donald trump says. trump doesn t even claim it s a $291 million property. not when he knows people are watching. when he filed hi financial
York was a place called seven springs. that was that was the estate where gadhafi planned to stay on the lawn. at the time of that gadhafi controversy, seven springs was own and it is still owned today by president donald j. trump. and that tonight is where we get to the crime part of this story, the maybe crime part, or at least the crime question. this property in bedford, new york, seven springs. as you can see, it s a big mansion. it s just over 200 acres. mr. trump bought the property in 1995. when trump bought it in 1995, he paid $7.5 million for it. and there s good evidence, reliable public records evidence that that property, that silver sorry, that seven springs property has appreciated nicely over time. the washington post reports that by 2013, so less than 20 years after trump first bought