Category: The Trump Organization

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Crime Eric Trump The Trump Organization

WATCH Eric Trump Almost Burst Into Tears During An Interview With Sean Hannity

Things are falling apart for the Trump family, and the stress of multiple investigations — paired with news that the Trump Organization’s longtime accounting firm has dumped the company and declared Trump Org’s financial filings are a lie — led Eric Trump go to on Sean Hannity’s show Monday evening and whine about how bad things are.

At a couple of points during the discussion, Eric even looked like he might start weeping at any moment.

Rather than defend his father and the Trump Organization, Eric Trump used deflection, suggesting that Hillary Clinton needs to be under investigation:

“Where are the prosecutors right now? You know, the same prosecutors, they’ll go after my father every single day for nothing, right? Just because they want to disqualify him because he’s clearly the front runner for 2024.

“Where are those prosecutors? Hillary Rodham Clinton is a New York resident. Let me just kind of break that down for you. She lives in Chappaqua, New York and guess where Trump Tower is located is located? It’s located on Fifth Avenue in New York. Where are these prosecutors? Where is the DA? Isn’t that a federal – Isn’t that a, you know, isn’t that fraud? Isn’t that all sorts of offenses?”

Seconds later, the ex-president’s son asked Hannity:

“Where’s Letitia James in this whole thing? Is she just gonna ignore this because Hillary happens to be in her political party?”

The “whole thing” Eric is referring to is a court filing by Special Counsel John Durham which right-wing media is attempting to prove is a smoking gun that proves Hillary was spying on Trump. Problem is, there’s nothing in that filing that suggests such a thing, as Dean Obeidallah noted on Twitter:

Attorney Marcy Wheeler also explained what a giant nothing burger the Durham filing is during an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday morning:

“One of the things [Durham] revealed in that, which I have heard from other people is this claim that Rodney Joffe was accessing data from the White House. All of that data precedes Trump’s inauguration, so you have Trump out there calling for these people to be put to death when really what happened is Rodney Joffe was trying to keep [then-president] Barack Obama safe from hackers. That’s all it is. That’s why Trump wants these people killed, Durham knows that.”

Poor Eric. He can sense that the walls are closing in on him, his father and two of his siblings, Don Jr. and Ivanka. So he’s lashing out and getting all weepy. He’d do better to keep his mouth shut and let his attorneys handle the matter. Instead, he’s giving prosecutors even more ammunition they can use against him and his family.

 

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Business Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Trump Organization Facing Financial Collapse After Accounting Firm Cuts Ties: Report

Now that his longtime accounting firm has given him the boot and declared that his financial statements cannot be believed, failed former President Donald Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, are facing a major financial crisis that could well send the real estate mogul’s business into collapse .

On Monday, Mazars USA LLP released a letter stating that the Trump Organization’s financial statements from 2011 through 2020 “should no longer be relied upon,” which suggests the ex-president’s company has engaged in systematic fraud in order to obtain large bank loans to keep Trump Org. afloat.

With nearly $600 million in loans coming due over the next four years, Trump is already trying to locate financing that will allow him to stay in business.

But banks are probably not going to be willing to help prop up a company that’s facing legal jeopardy on multiple fronts and has now been outed as having lied about its assets.

According to attorney George Conway, the former president is facing almost certain bankruptcy, telling CNN host John Berman:

“This is about as calamitous a thing as could happen to a business as you could imagine, other than getting indicted and going bankrupt, and this could lead to going bankrupt.”

Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien echoed Conway in an article he wrote for Bloomberg, noting:

The Trumps, like most real estate developers, rely on massive bank loans to finance their operations. Their company has more than $590 million of debt coming due within the next four years, and Trump himself has personally guaranteed more than half of it. Banks are likely to find it untenable to keep doing business with a company or individuals already rejected by their own accountants.

The Trump Organization is now on the brink of complete financial collapse, and it could be only a matter of months before indictments are handed down in New York against the former president’s company and other members of his family (Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka) who work there.

Perhaps George Conway put it best with this tweet:

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Crime Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Trump’s Longtime Accounting Firm Says His Financial Statements Are Bogus

Donald Trump and the Trump Organization’s longtime accounting firm has dropped him as a client because they say statements of his financial condition cannot be “relied upon.”

CNBC reports the news came in a court filing on Monday:

The accounting firm Mazars has fired the Trump Organization as a client after saying that a decade’s worth of statements of ex-President Donald Trump’s financial condition “should no longer be relied upon,” the New York Attorney General’s office revealed in a court filing Monday.

Mazars, which for years prepared Trump’s income tax returns and financial statements used to obtain loans for his company, told the Trump Organization’s top lawyer Alan Garten that it would no longer represent the company due to the lack of reliability of the financial statements in a letter last Wednesday.

The letter was cited by AG Letitia James’ office on Monday as it asked a state judge to order the Trump Organization, Donald Trump Jr. and his sister Ivanka Trump, and others to comply with subpoenas seeking documents and testimony.

Mazars also noted in their letter:

The firm said it based on its decision about the past work’s reliability, “as well as the totality of circumstances, we have also reached the point such that there is a non-waivable conflict of interest with the Trump Organization.”

The information from the accounting firm would seem to confirm accusations made against the Trump Organization that Trump and his company have repeatedly inflated the value of their assets in order to obtain larger loans which they then devalued when it came time to pay taxes.

Attorney Luppe B. Luppen had this to say about the move by Mazars:

“The determination by Mazars that Trump’s financial statements over a full decade are not reliable through no fault of its own amounts to a declaration that it has been repeatedly misled by its client.”

 

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Crime Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Trump Ordered To Testify Under Oath In New York Fraud Investigation

Failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump has been notified that he will have to sit for a sworn deposition in the civil fraud case against him in New York.

The Washington Post reports:

New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking a deposition from former president Donald Trump early next year as part of her investigation into potential fraud inside the Trump Organization, according to people familiar with the matter.

James has requested to take his testimony on Jan. 7 at her New York office as part of a civil investigation into whether Trump’s company committed financial fraud in the valuations of properties to different entities, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is ongoing.

One of the people familiar with the investigation said James is examining whether widespread fraud “permeated the Trump Organization.”

Notified of the deposition date, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization used one of the ex-president’s favorite invocations whenever he’s being investigated:

“This is another political witch-hunt,” the statement said, noting that James is running for governor next year. “The only focus of the New York AG is to investigate Trump, all for her own political ambitions … This political prosecution is illegal, unethical and is a travesty to our great state and legal system.”

James is clearly turning up the heat on Trump, who is also under criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Vance suspects Trump and his company inflated the value of real estate assets in order to get larger loans from lenders and later devalued those same properties to avoid paying the required taxes. Bank and tax fraud are just two of the crimes under investigation by Vance.

The former president’s son, Eric, has given a deposition in the fraud investigation being conducted by James. He originally refused to sit for a deposition but later relented. That deposition was given in October of last year, shortly before American voters booted the Donald Trump from the White House and replaced him with President Joe Biden.

The danger of Trump giving a deposition cannot be overstated, according to biographer Tim O’Brien, who has written extensively about the ex-president:

“He can’t be scripted, and he’s injudicious, and he often doesn’t understand that the process is about events and facts, rather than being performance art.”

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Crime Donald Trump The Trump Organization Uncategorized

New Grand Jury Seated In Manhattan As Case Against Trump Expands Again: Report

 

A second long-term grand jury has just been seated in Manhattan, according to the Washington Post, and the legal investigation of failed, one-term former President Donald Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, has expanded yet again.

The new grand jury, empaneled by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., will meet for three days a week over the next six months:

It was expected to hear evidence on Thursday, meeting in Manhattan’s Surrogate’s Court — usually a forum for disputes over the estates of the deceased — because the criminal court buildings are jammed with a rush of post-pandemic trials.

One person familiar with the matter said the second grand jury was expected to examine how former president Donald Trump’s company valued its assets.

The first grand jury investigated possible tax fraud by members of the Trump Organization, which resulted in the indictment of Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of Trump Organization who allegedly hid compensation from the IRS that was paid to them by the ex-president.

Trump and his company are also under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James:

James (D) said in a court filing last year that her office was investigating Trump’s valuations of three properties: his Los Angeles golf course, a Manhattan office building and an estate in suburban New York called Seven Springs.

James’s filing said she was interested in a “conservation easement” that Trump obtained on the Seven Springs property in 2015 — giving him tax benefits in exchange for renouncing his right to build houses on part of the estate. Trump boosted the value of that tax break by estimating that the land would have brought him $21 million if he’d sold it.

The Trumps have repeatedly whined that they are being targeted by the legal system for political reasons, with Trump Org. Executive Vice President Eric Trump saying:

“This type of targeting and harassment violates every ethical guideline of a prosecutor. It’s wrong.”