Trump 44: Finally on Trial

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Because they need to make their offerings to their lord and master: "RNC to hold winter meetings at Trump resort that was considered for G-7 summit"

  Reveal hidden contents

The Republican National Committee will hold its winter meetings at President Trump’s Doral golf course in Florida next year — awarding another of the party’s most lucrative events to the president’s private business, a party spokesman said Thursday.

The multiday event will be held in January at the Trump National Doral near the Miami airport, the spokesman said.

Last month, Trump briefly chose Doral to host a much larger event: next year’s Group of Seven summit of world leaders — effectively awarding a massive federal contract to himself. After bipartisan criticism, Trump canceled the event a few days later. No new site has yet been chosen for the summit.

Still, this will be the second time in two years that the GOP will hold a major meeting at the resort — a key property for Trump that has suffered financial decline since he entered politics.

The first GOP meeting at Doral was in spring 2018. That event produced about $630,000 in revenue for Trump’s company, from the GOP and individual attendees, according to a review of campaign-finance records.

At another GOP meeting, in winter 2018, the GOP held most of the event at another hotel — but it also included a dinner at Trump’s D.C. hotel, for which it paid Trump’s company $169,000.

On Thursday, a GOP spokesman defended the decision to return to Doral again in 2020.

“The media is obsessed with our spending at Trump properties and has covered it ad nauseam,” said spokesman Michael Ahrens. “As we have stated multiple times, we continue to hold events at them because they have fantastic service and secure spaces that fit our needs.”

He noted that the majority of recent GOP meetings were held entirely at properties Trump does not own.

Out of the last seven, four included no visits at a Trump property.

Ahrens said Doral was chosen for the 2020 winter meetings in March; campaign-finance records show the GOP paid the resort $84,822 that month for “venue rental and catering.” The event draws hundreds of Republicans for fundraising and debates about strategy and policy.

The Doral resort is a keystone of Trump’s hospitality business, which the president still owns and from which he can draw payments. Doral provides Trump with about $75 million in revenue per year, more than any other hotel or golf club, according to his required financial disclosures. The disclosures do not include profit figures.

But, according to documents that the company submitted to Miami-Dade County in an effort to lower its property taxes, the resort’s profits fell 69 percent in the three years after Trump entered politics in 2015. The documents were obtained by The Washington Post through a public-records request.

Late last year, a tax consultant hired by the Trump Organization told county officials that Doral was “severely underperforming” and blamed the polarizing Trump brand. The resort’s revenue rebounded slightly in 2018, according to Trump’s financial disclosures.

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions for this story. In the past, it has blamed the Doral hotel’s troubles on fears about the Zika virus and hurricanes, but not the Trump brand.

Like other Trump properties, Doral has compensated for some of its lost customers by attracting new ones, closely aligned with Trump’s politics.

Trump himself visited for a fundraiser in June, and a Trump-supporting group held a three-day conference there in October that included the showing of a doctored video where Trump appeared to stab and shoot his political opponents and members of the media.

 

Bedbugs. Bedbugs for all who want to stay at Doral. If you want to lay down with the dogs, you wake up with fleas (or bedbugs, in this case).

[GreyhoundFan]

Second time in two days: "Trump appeals to Supreme Court again, this time to block House committee’s subpoena seeking his financial records"

Spoiler

For the second day in a row, President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to protect his personal and business financial records from disclosure, this time to a congressional committee.

Trump’s private lawyers asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to put a hold on an appeals court decision that said the House Oversight and Reform Committee was within its rights to subpoena the information from Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2 to 1 against Trump’s efforts to stop Mazars from turning over the information, and the full circuit earlier this week declined to reconsider that decision. Roberts is the justice who hears emergency requests arising from that court.

Mazars has said it will comply with court orders to release the requested eight years of information, but the final decision seems likely to come from the Supreme Court.

The president’s lawyer William S. Consovoy said the Supreme Court’s intervention was imperative. Under the lower court’s decision, “any committee of Congress can subpoena any personal information from the President; all the committee needs to say is that it’s considering legislation that would force Presidents to disclose that same information,” Consovoy wrote in the request filed Friday.

“Given the temptation to dig up dirt on political rivals, intrusive subpoenas into personal lives of Presidents will become our new normal in times of divided government — no matter which party is in power. If every committee chairman is going to have this unbounded authority, this Court should be the one to say so.”

The new filing from the president means the court now faces perhaps historic separation-of-powers decisions with two different demands over largely the same information. One involves a state prosecutor’s investigatory powers, the other Congress’s oversight ability.

On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers tried to block Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s attempt to enforce a grand jury subpoena.

Vance has said his office needs the records for its investigation into alleged hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, and to former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Both women said they had affairs with Trump, and Vance’s office is examining whether any Trump Organization officials filed falsified business records, in violation of state law, related to the payments. Trump has denied the affairs and any wrongdoing.

Friday’s filing concerned a Democratic-led House committee’s attempt to get Trump’s financial records. The committee said it is looking into possible conflicts of interest and irregularities in the president’s financial disclosure reports.

At the D.C. Circuit, Consovoy, the president’s lawyer, argued the committee had exceeded its legislative role and was acting in a law enforcement capacity rather than serving a “legitimate legislative purpose.”

Trump’s attorneys warned that validating the subpoena would mean “Congress is free to investigate every detail of a president’s personal life, with endless subpoenas to his accountants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, family, friends and anyone else with information that a committee finds interesting.”

The Justice Department filed a brief in support of the president’s position that the subpoena cannot be enforced because the committee didn’t sufficiently justify its purpose.

In October, the panel’s 2-1 ruling traced the long history of courts upholding Congress’s investigative authority.

“We conclude that in issuing the challenged subpoena, the committee was engaged in a ‘legitimate legislative investigation,’ rather than an impermissible law-enforcement inquiry,” wrote Judge David S. Tatel, who was joined by Judge Patricia A. Millett. Both were nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents.

“It is not at all suspicious that the committee would focus an investigation into presidential financial disclosures on the accuracy and sufficiency of the sitting president’s filings. That the committee began its inquiry at a logical starting point betrays no hidden law-enforcement purpose.”

Tatel said the court did not need to decide whether Congress can subpoena a sitting president because the order was directed at the accounting firm — not Trump.

In her dissent, Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump nominee, said if the House wants to investigate possible wrongdoing by the president, it should do so by invoking its constitutional impeachment powers — not through legislative oversight. (The House subsequently opened an impeachment inquiry, but focused on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, not financial impropriety.)

The majority said Rao’s view laid out in her dissent would “reorder the very structure of the Constitution” and “enfeeble the legislative branch”

“The dissent cites nothing in the Constitution or case law — and there is nothing — that compels Congress to abandon its legislative role at the first scent of potential illegality and confine itself exclusively to the impeachment process. Nor does anything in the dissent’s lengthy recitation of historical examples dictate that result,” Tatel wrote.

Trump’s lawyers requested a rehearing, but only two other judges publicly joined Rao in saying the full circuit should hear the case.

 

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Because they need to make their offerings to their lord and master: "RNC to hold winter meetings at Trump resort that was considered for G-7 summit"

  Hide contents

The Republican National Committee will hold its winter meetings at President Trump’s Doral golf course in Florida next year — awarding another of the party’s most lucrative events to the president’s private business, a party spokesman said Thursday.

The multiday event will be held in January at the Trump National Doral near the Miami airport, the spokesman said.

Last month, Trump briefly chose Doral to host a much larger event: next year’s Group of Seven summit of world leaders — effectively awarding a massive federal contract to himself. After bipartisan criticism, Trump canceled the event a few days later. No new site has yet been chosen for the summit.

Still, this will be the second time in two years that the GOP will hold a major meeting at the resort — a key property for Trump that has suffered financial decline since he entered politics.

The first GOP meeting at Doral was in spring 2018. That event produced about $630,000 in revenue for Trump’s company, from the GOP and individual attendees, according to a review of campaign-finance records.

At another GOP meeting, in winter 2018, the GOP held most of the event at another hotel — but it also included a dinner at Trump’s D.C. hotel, for which it paid Trump’s company $169,000.

On Thursday, a GOP spokesman defended the decision to return to Doral again in 2020.

“The media is obsessed with our spending at Trump properties and has covered it ad nauseam,” said spokesman Michael Ahrens. “As we have stated multiple times, we continue to hold events at them because they have fantastic service and secure spaces that fit our needs.”

He noted that the majority of recent GOP meetings were held entirely at properties Trump does not own.

Out of the last seven, four included no visits at a Trump property.

Ahrens said Doral was chosen for the 2020 winter meetings in March; campaign-finance records show the GOP paid the resort $84,822 that month for “venue rental and catering.” The event draws hundreds of Republicans for fundraising and debates about strategy and policy.

The Doral resort is a keystone of Trump’s hospitality business, which the president still owns and from which he can draw payments. Doral provides Trump with about $75 million in revenue per year, more than any other hotel or golf club, according to his required financial disclosures. The disclosures do not include profit figures.

But, according to documents that the company submitted to Miami-Dade County in an effort to lower its property taxes, the resort’s profits fell 69 percent in the three years after Trump entered politics in 2015. The documents were obtained by The Washington Post through a public-records request.

Late last year, a tax consultant hired by the Trump Organization told county officials that Doral was “severely underperforming” and blamed the polarizing Trump brand. The resort’s revenue rebounded slightly in 2018, according to Trump’s financial disclosures.

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions for this story. In the past, it has blamed the Doral hotel’s troubles on fears about the Zika virus and hurricanes, but not the Trump brand.

Like other Trump properties, Doral has compensated for some of its lost customers by attracting new ones, closely aligned with Trump’s politics.

Trump himself visited for a fundraiser in June, and a Trump-supporting group held a three-day conference there in October that included the showing of a doctored video where Trump appeared to stab and shoot his political opponents and members of the media.

 

I guess trumplicans like bedbugs then. 

Birds bugs of a feather, and all that, I suppose.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s Doral resort was a last-minute addition in search for G-7 site, newly released email shows"

Spoiler

Secret Service agents had identified four U.S. sites as finalists for next year’s Group of Seven summit — but then they were told to add a new finalist: President Trump’s Doral resort, according to an internal Secret Service email released late Friday.

“Our original itinerary included Hawaii, Utah, California and North Carolina,” a Secret Service official wrote, describing a trip that a team of Secret Service personnel took in July to examine the finalists. “By departure, they had already cut two (California and North Carolina) and added Miami on the back end.”

“Miami” meant President Trump’s resort near the Miami airport, which hadn’t been among the original 10 sites that the Secret Service team had vetted. Although vetting of possible sites had begun in late May, the official wrote on July 12 that “yesterday was the first time we put eyes on this [Doral] property.”

The official’s email was released to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which made a public-records request and then sued when government agencies did not comply.

It sheds light on the process that led to Trump’s short-lived decision last month to award the Group of Seven summit — a gathering of top world leaders — to his own business.

The official was identified in the email as serving in the dignitary protective division, but the official’s name was redacted.

The email does not make clear what the agents thought of Doral as a possible site. It includes the phrase “Although the property does present some challenges.” The remainder of the evaluation is also redacted.

The Secret Service planned to present Trump with the results of its examinations in mid-July and then let him make the final decision, the email said.

Doral was announced as the site of the summit on Oct. 17. Trump canceled that plan two days later, after a bipartisan outcry.

At the time, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the Doral site had been selected after a thorough search process. “It became apparent at the end of that process that Doral was, by far and away — far and away — the best physical facility for this meeting,” Mulvaney said.

In a news conference, Mulvaney described a long search process that began with 12 sites, then whittled the list down to four, including Doral.

He said Trump had been the one to suggest his own resort: “What about Doral?” But Mulvaney gave no indication that this addition had come so late in the process.

The White House and the Secret Service did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Doral resort has fallen into financial decline since Trump got into politics, according to documents that the Trump Organization submitted to Miami-Dade County in an effort to lower their property tax valuations. The resort’s profits fell 69 percent in two years, from 2015 to 2017.

Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for the watchdog group that obtained the email, said it appeared Trump had intervened in the process to steer business to himself.

“We now know that Doral was added for consideration at the last minute and the Secret Service had reluctance about holding it there,” Libowitz said.

No new site has been announced for next year’s Group of Seven summit, a massive event that involves many world leaders and hundreds of diplomats, media and security personnel. One official close to the search, who was not authorized to speak about it publicly, described it as a “mad scramble” to find another site.

 

[fraurosena]

Oh. What could this mean, if anything at all?

Some thoughts:

1. ‘taking advantage of a free weekend’ ?

2. The fact that this seems to be an unplanned visit could mean he might not be not feeling well and needs a check up. Stress from the impeachment perhaps. 

3. He could be faking not feeling well, so he can state that he’s resigning because of health issues before he gets removed from office. 

4. He really is getting his annual check up. 

At the moment I’m most inclined to believe he’s faking it. Might be wishful thinking though.

[fraurosena]

Ha! It seems I wasn’t the only one to think he could be faking. 

Never Trumper predicts Walter Reed visit excuse to resign for health reasons

It was such a nice theory... snif.

 

[fraurosena]

As if betraying the Kurds wasn’t egregious enough. 

 

[SPHASH]

Regarding Shithead's visit to Walter Reed, nervous breakdown perhaps?

[GreyhoundFan]

7 hours ago, SPHASH said:

Regarding Shithead's visit to Walter Reed, nervous breakdown perhaps?

I was thinking the same thing. Can you imagine how much more incoherent he would be while taking Xanax?

[Xan]

I wondered about the Walter Reed visit too.

Originally, I figured he'd try to take Pence down with him if impeachment seemed likely.  He's certainly thrown out enough info about "talk to Pence".  But it may be that his kids have talked him into getting Pence to promise blanket pardons for him and his family in return for bowing out.  Of course, Pence would agree.  He wants the presidency.

I think this is a first step to resigning for "health reasons" if Pence guarantees those pardons.  The big baby has had major trouble coping ever since he actually heard people booing him.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, Xan said:

I wondered about the Walter Reed visit too.

Originally, I figured he'd try to take Pence down with him if impeachment seemed likely.  He's certainly thrown out enough info about "talk to Pence".  But it may be that his kids have talked him into getting Pence to promise blanket pardons for him and his family in return for bowing out.  Of course, Pence would agree.  He wants the presidency.

I think this is a first step to resigning for "health reasons" if Pence guarantees those pardons.  The big baby has had major trouble coping ever since he actually heard people booing him.

This is why I was so pleased that the impeachment inquiry is also looking into Pence's role in all of this. His aide's testimony that was released yesterday is devastating for Trump, but also implicate's Pence's complicity. 

When one domino begins to topple, all of them will. 

[Xan]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

This is why I was so pleased that the impeachment inquiry is also looking into Pence's role in all of this. His aide's testimony that was released yesterday is devastating for Trump, but also implicate's Pence's complicity. 

When one domino begins to topple, all of them will. 

And that is why the Repubs are being so crazy about this.  Key example:  Graham.  If Trump and Pence both go, it's President Pelosi!!!  Then a lot of Republican heads will roll.

[onekidanddone]

36 minutes ago, Xan said:

And that is why the Repubs are being so crazy about this.  Key example:  Graham.  If Trump and Pence both go, it's President Pelosi!!!  Then a lot of Republican heads will roll.

I’m not sure I want President Pelosi because that feeds into the coup hysteria. We need her where she is for now. 

President Pence for a few months leading up to the election means he steeped deep Trump stench to go down in epic fashion in November 2020. Then an investigation can be opens on Mike. 
 

Just occurred to me after I hit post that President Mikey means he can pardon the entire Trump crime family. 

Edited November 17, 2019 by onekidanddone

[Xan]

2 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Just occurred to me after I hit post that President Mikey means he can pardon the entire Trump crime family. 

Sure, he will.  That's the only way that Trump will ever agree to leave.  I'm okay with Pence doing the final year - as long as the investigation turns up enough dirt to doom him in the next election.

[onekidanddone]

4 minutes ago, Xan said:

Sure, he will.  That's the only way that Trump will ever agree to leave.  I'm okay with Pence doing the final year - as long as the investigation turns up enough dirt to doom him in the next election.

Can Trump be pardoned for state crimes?

[Xan]

16 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Can Trump be pardoned for state crimes?

No, I don't think so.  But all of the current crimes being discussed by the impeachment group are classified as federal.  NY could probably eventually get him on tax evasion, even though he's changed his residence to FL.  He's too influential in Florida and there are too many Repubs in power there for Florida to charge him with anything.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Can Trump be pardoned for state crimes?

No, he can't. A POTUS can only pardon federal crimes.

I don't think Pence will pardon the whole crime syndicate though. That would be political and/or reputational suicide, and he may not be the smartest tool in the shed, but I don't think he's that obtuse. 

Instead, I think Trump will be removed (or potentially he'll resign) and then Pence will become POTUS for a couple of months. If the repugs are smart (mind you, there's no indication they are) they will not put Pence on the ticket for 2020, as he's tainted with the toxic trumpism brand. Again, if they're smart, they'll put someone on the ticket who is more palatable and seemingly untainted by trumpism. Mitt Romney might be in with a chance... if they're smart. It all depends on what kind of hold the trumplicans have on the repugs.

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stop laughing:

Oh myyy

[Smash!]

Some of the comments are gold [emoji23]

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"We need a second opinion on the president’s health"

Spoiler

The only thing of which we can be fairly certain about President Trump’s mysterious Saturday-afternoon trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is this: The White House is not telling the truth when it claims the president was there “to begin portions of his routine annual physical exam.”

We know this because — well, because those people lie about pretty much everything.

And the compulsion of Trump and his team to contradict the obvious reality that we see with our own eyes is particularly egregious where the president’s health is concerned.

Who could forget the fables from his personal physician, Harold Bornstein, who released a letter in 2015 assuring the nation that an overweight 70-year-old man with a lifetime of bad eating habits and an aversion to strenuous exercise would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency?” (Bornstein later said Trump himself had dictated the letter.)

Then there was the miraculous growth spurt that occurred between the issuing of his driver’s license in 2012 and his physical in 2018, which reportedly added an inch to his height. That exam also allowed him to come in exactly 1 pound short of being classified as medically obese at a reported 239 pounds. By 2019, however, Trump had added another four pounds and crossed the line.

So now the oldest president in U.S. history claims the purpose of his two-hour medical visit, which was not on his public schedule, was to conduct “phase one of my yearly physical. Everything very good (great!). Will complete next year.” Phase one? What does that entail? Has anyone else ever taken a routine physical in installments spread out over months? Has he signed up for some kind of quirky flexible spending plan with his insurance?

There is, of course, a long history of presidents being less than honest with the country about the state of their health. Grover Cleveland had secret surgery aboard a yacht in the summer of 1893 to hide the fact that he had a tumor on the roof of his mouth. Americans had no clue that Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 stroke was so severe that his wife, Edith, was effectively running the country. In the summer of 1944, the Democratic Party nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt to an unprecedented fourth term, despite the fact that only weeks earlier doctors had written a letter predicting he would not survive to see the end of it. (He died nine months later.) In 1957, a press aide in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s White House told reporters that his stroke had been a “heart attack of the brain,” a phrase the press dutifully reported, as though that was somehow less alarming. Nor did the nation know in real time that the youthful and vigorous John F. Kennedy had a life-threatening case of Addison’s disease, or how close Ronald Reagan came to dying by an assassin’s bullet in 1981.

But medical privacy is something that should not be granted the most powerful person in the world.

As Trump embarks on his effort to convince us that he deserves another four years in office, Americans should demand something more than what they are getting, starting with a briefing from the physicians who treated him at Walter Reed.

“Oh, the rumors are always flying,” his press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Saturday night on Fox News. “He’s as healthy as can be.” Could we please have a second opinion on that?

 

[JMarie]

23 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Ha! It seems I wasn’t the only one to think he could be faking. 

Never Trumper predicts Walter Reed visit excuse to resign for health reasons

It was such a nice theory... snif.

 

No golf yesterday???

[Dandruff]

I'll speculate that:  Trump anticipated an ego-challenging week, was consoling himself with bigly numbers of hamberders, and developed indigestion (however he'd spell it).  Since he's POTUS - with the corresponding assumption that he's an extra-special keeper - it was decided to bring him to the hospital to make sure he wasn't having a heart attack vs. a case of the painful farts.  A series of cardiac enzyme tests were ordered and it was determined over several hours, and at substantial cost to taxpayers, that he was suffering from an acute case of "too-much-hamberder" illness.  He was given OTC gas relief pills and sent back to the WH with dietary recommendations that will most likely be ignored.

[fraurosena]

Dun-dun-dunnnnn!

There are theories going around about this apparent shell company which say that the Trump organization owns this LLC themselves and they use it to move money around and to keep the org's profits down for tax purposes. Other, more out there theories claim it's owned by a Russian oligarch (or two), and Trump really does owe them this much money, or it's used to launder money or whatever. Who knows though? At this point in time it's anybody's guess. 

The fact remains that this is a really strange set up, and it should be investigated.

[fraurosena]

More info on the LLC loan mystery.

Donald Trump Has Never Explained a Mysterious $50 Million Loan.

Quote

Donald Trump’s massive debts—he owes hundreds of millions of dollars—are the subject of continuous congressional and journalistic scrutiny. But for years, one Trump loan has been particularly mystifying: a debt of more than $50 million that Trump claims he owes to one of his own companies. According to tax and financial experts, the loan, which Trump has never fully explained, might be part of a controversial tax avoidance scheme known as debt parking. Yet a Mother Jones investigation has uncovered information that raises questions about the very existence of this loan, presenting the possibility that this debt was concocted as a ploy to evade income taxes—a move that could constitute tax fraud.

Here’s what is publicly known about this mystery debt: On the personal financial disclosure forms that Trump must file each year as president, he has divulged that he owes “over $50 million” to a company called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. The forms note that this entity is fully owned by Trump. In other words, Trump owes a large chunk of money to a company he controls.

The disclosures state that this loan is connected to Trump’s hotel and tower in Chicago, and the forms reveal puzzling details about Chicago Unit Acquisition: It earns no revenue—suggesting that Trump was not paying interest or principal on the loan—and Trump assigns virtually no value to Chicago Unit Acquisition. Something doesn’t add up. Under basic accounting principles, a firm that is owed money and has no outstanding debt should be worth at least as much as it is owed. The loan has another odd feature: It is identified as a “springing” loan, a type of loan made to borrowers who are viewed as credit risks. Known sometimes as “bad boy” loans, these agreements allow the lender to impose harsh repayment terms if certain criteria aren’t met. These are not the type of loan terms that someone is likely to impose on himself.

The Trump Organization has consistently refused to answer questions about Chicago Unit Acquisition, a limited liability company it formed in Delaware in 2005, as construction began on the Trump International Hotel and Tower in downtown Chicago. But Trump did tell the New York Times in a 2016 interview that this debt represents a loan he repurchased from a group of lenders. “We don’t assess any value to it because we don’t care,” Trump said. “I have the mortgage. That is all there is. Very simple. I am the bank.” Jason Greenblatt, who was then the Trump Organization’s top lawyer, declined to explain to the Times the reason for the Chicago Unit Acquisition deal. “It’s really personal corporate trade secrets, if you will,” he said. “Neither newsworthy or frankly anybody’s business.”

Trump has not publicly identified the creditors from whom he bought this loan. But a 2008 lawsuit Trump filed in connection with the Chicago project—a case that produced voluminous records detailing the financing of this venture—suggests two possibilities. The majority of the hotel and tower project was bankrolled by Trump’s lender of choice, Deutsche Bank, which gave him a $640 million loan. Fortress Investment Group, a New York City-based hedge fund, provided Trump an additional $130 million in financing. (Two other firms, Cerberus Capital Management and Dune Capital Management, partnered with Fortress on this loan.) According to court records, these were the only loans associated with the construction and development of Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago.

Trump’s Chicago project quickly became a financial debacle—hence the lawsuit. The 2008 financial crisis struck as the project neared completion, and Trump, saddled with nearly $800 million in debt, was in jeopardy of defaulting on a $330 million payment he owed to Deutsche Bank in November that year.

To fend off his biggest creditor, Trump attempted a brazen legal gambit. He sued Deutsche Bank, accusing the firm of causing the housing crisis and economic meltdown that was supposedly inhibiting his ability to sell units in the Chicago project and repay his debts. Eventually, Trump settled his financial differences with Deutsche by repaying some of the money he owed the bank and refinancing the rest through the bank’s private banking arm, according to records filed with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. That is, Trump took out a new loan through Deutsche’s private bank to cover his debt to the firm’s commercial lending side. This transaction apparently did not involve purchasing any debt, suggesting the debt that Trump claims to have bought could not be from the Deutsche Bank loan. That leaves the Fortress debt.

In March 2012, as Trump resolved his dispute with Deutsche Bank, he finalized a separate deal with Fortress and its partners to clear his debt with them. According to a source with direct knowledge of the deal who spoke to Mother Jones, Fortress ultimately agreed to accept 50 cents on the dollar—or about $48 million—for the outstanding debt (which by that time amounted to just under $100 million). This was a steep loss for the hedge fund and its partners. The question is whether the deal was what’s known as a “discounted payoff”—in which the debt was considered repaid and the loan was canceled by the lender—or whether Trump purchased what remained of the loan. That distinction has enormous implications.

When a lender forgives a portion of a loan, the IRS considers the unpaid portion taxable income. For instance, if a lender accepts $50 million in repayment of a $100 million debt, the borrower, in the eyes of federal tax authorities, has earned $50 million and owes tax on that. The tax could be as high as 39 percent. But big-time borrowers have devised a tactic to forestall paying taxes in cases in which they’re able to buy back their debt at a discount. They purchase the debt through a corporation, parking the loan within this entity to temporarily avoid realizing income. Debt parking falls into a legal gray area. “Maybe there are respectable ways that it could work, but I would call it kind of a scam to pretend you haven’t gotten rid of the debt,” says Daniel Shaviro, a professor of tax law at New York University.

Debt parking can be permissible as long as the borrower intends to repay the loan. Parking debt indefinitely with no intention to repay it, however, violates federal tax law, according to tax experts.

For that reason, Trump’s comment to the Times that “we don’t care” about the loan raised a red flag for several tax experts consulted by Mother Jones. They wondered whether this was an admission that he has no intention of repaying the loan—an implication reinforced by Trump’s disclosures showing Chicago Unit Acquisition generates no revenue and has practically no value. And debt parking that essentially places a loan into suspended animation indefinitely would not be considered legal, according to these tax experts.

But the story of Trump’s mystery loan gets even more complicated. According to two sources with direct knowledge of the disposition of the Fortress loan, Fortress did not sell Trump this loan. Instead, according to these sources, Fortress canceled the debt after Trump paid about half of it. “The transaction that Donald Trump did with the lender was a discounted payoff and not a purchase of the loan—I know that for sure,” a person involved with the deal tells Mother Jones. That means there may have been no loan to buy, no debt to park; Trump might have invented a loan—and then parked it.

Fortress declined to comment on the Trump loan. Representatives of Cerberus Capital Management and Dune Real Estate Partners (which took over the business once run by Dune Capital Management) did not respond to requests for comment.

To recap: Trump claims he bought a debt related to his Chicago venture, but neither of the two loans associated with this property appear to have been purchased. The Deutsche Bank loan was refinanced. The Fortress debt, according to sources with knowledge of the transaction, was canceled. And this raises a question: Did Trump create a bogus loan to evade a whopping tax bill on about $48 million of income?

Several legal and real estate finance experts say it’s possible to fabricate a loan. Doing so would be as easy as creating some paperwork and declaring the debt on your tax returns, though such a scheme would also violate federal tax law.

“When you see it, if you lay all this out, it’s pretty brazen,” says Adam Levitin, a law professor specializing in commercial real estate finance at Georgetown University. “If he didn’t actually buy the loan, this is just garden-variety fraud.”

Most loans are documented in public records, but Mother Jones could locate no documentation of a loan owned by Chicago Unit Acquisition. The Cook County Recorder of Deeds has records concerning the original Deutsche Bank loan for the Chicago project; the Deutsche Bank loan that replaced it; and the Fortress loan. But the Recorder of Deeds has no filings related to Chicago Unit Acquisition.

Not all loans are tied to property and require registration with local authorities. In those cases, a filing called a Uniform Commercial Code financing statement is typically made. This is a publicly available legal form in which a creditor states its interest in the event of a loan default. The $130 million Fortress loan had a UCC statement filed in Delaware in 2005. Fortress filed a notice that this loan agreement was terminated—it does not specify how—in March 2012. A search of records in New York (where the Trump Organization is based), Illinois (where the hotel is located), and Delaware (where Chicago Unit Acquisition is registered) found no UCC records related to Chicago Unit Acquisition.

Levitin and Steven Schwarcz, a law and business professor at Duke University, say it’s not totally unheard of for a company to skip filing a UCC statement in cases where one branch of a firm is loaning money to another. But Levitin says that submitting a UCC statement is standard practice in most scenarios where there is a large amount of collateral at stake. 

Could the Chicago Unit Acquisition loan be legitimate? The tax and real estate experts interviewed by Mother Jones had a difficult time explaining what this transaction could be. And the Trump Organization offered no explanations of its own. The company did not respond to a detailed list of questions from Mother Jones regarding Chicago Unit Acquisition and this loan. Nor did the White House.

Trump has a track record of pushing the envelope when it comes to paying—or not paying—taxes. In a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation examining the origins of the president’s fortune, the New York Times reported in 2018 that “President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents.”

Breaking with a four-decade precedent for presidents, Trump has refused to release his tax returns, which would shed light on the tax strategies he has employed over the years. But the release of Trump’s returns alone would probably not solve the Chicago Unit Acquisition mystery. Nor would a standard IRS audit.

“It would take a forensic audit,” says Martin Lobel, a prominent tax lawyer based in Washington, DC. “It is very labor intensive, and it takes someone who has years of experience to spot the problem areas.” This type of audit would entail combing methodically through every shred of paperwork underpinning Trump’s financial claims. And Lobel and other tax experts Mother Jones interviewed are dubious that the IRS would mount this type of audit on a sitting president. “The IRS is not going to look too closely at Trump’s tax returns,” Lobel says.

But congressional Democrats, if they have their way, intend to do just that. In May, the House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed the IRS to hand over six years of Trump’s tax returns as part of an investigation into the agency’s presidential audit program. By law, the IRS must annually audit the returns of a serving president and vice president, but, as the panel’s chair, Richard Neal (D-Mass.), wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed, it’s not clear how much scrutiny these reviews entail. “Neither Congress nor the public knows anything about the scope of those audits and whether the president can exert undue influence on the IRS to affect his or her tax treatment,” Neal wrote. “If, for example, the president is already under audit at the time he or she takes office, what happens to that audit? We don’t know. My committee will consider legislation regarding the mandatory audit program to ensure these audits are conducted fairly and without undue influence from the commander in chief. And, as part of our deliberations, we must review his tax information to better understand the audit program and propose any needed changes.”

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), a senior Democratic member of the committee, says the tax returns could reveal how Trump does business, including if he and his company have employed dubious tax strategies. “Lying and tax avoidance appear to be a way of life for Trump,” he notes. “His tax returns could indicate the role tax-dodging plays in Trump’s overall business strategy. Perhaps this is another reason why Trump and his Republican enablers are so intent on defying the law to keep them hidden.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS, has so far rebuffed the Ways and Means Committee’s efforts to obtain Trump’s returns. In July, the panel sued the Treasury Department and the IRS to force them to comply. In a recent court filing, the committee revealed a tantalizing bit of information about its inquiry: A whistleblower had come forward with “credible allegations of ‘evidence of possible misconduct’—specifically, potential ‘inappropriate efforts to influence’ the mandatory audit program.”

Trump’s finances are currently the subject of multiple inquiries in his home state of New York. Following the New York Times investigation of the questionable tax schemes employed by Trump and his family, a spokesperson for the New York Department of Taxation and Finance said the agency was “vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation.” New York Attorney General Letitia James has also been scrutinizing the financing of several Trump projects. This investigation was sparked by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who told Congress earlier this year that Trump had inflated his assets on financial statements used to secure loans. In March, James subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank concerning multiple Trump ventures, including the Trump Chicago project. Her office declined to comment on whether it had subpoenaed Fortress or planned to do so in the future, but James tells Mother Jones in a statement: “My office takes any allegations of significant tax fraud seriously. No one is above the law—not even the president of the United States.”

If it looks like fraud, and smells like fraud, if it walks like fraud and talks like fraud...