The New York Times published a report Tuesday claiming President Donald Trump gained a large portion of his wealth through dubious tax schemes in the 1990s, including fraud, which immediately prompted an investigation by the New York state tax office.
According to the Times report, Trump and his family transferred millions of dollars from Trump’s father’s real estate business without paying taxes.
“The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation,” a spokesman from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance told CNBC.
Charles Harder, a lawyer for Trump, denied the allegations, saying that the newspaper based them on “extremely inaccurate” facts. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also defended the President, backing Trump’s claim that he only received a $1 million loan which he later paid back, instead of $60.7 million as the Times reported.
On Tuesday, Sanders also deemed the report a “misleading attack” on the President’s family “by the failing New York Times.
“Many decades ago the IRS reviewed and signed off on these transactions,” her statement continued, failing, however, to outright deny the claims made in the report.
The Times article further maintains that the President’s family committed “instances of outright fraud” and that Trump received what would today be $413 million from his father’s real estate empire. The findings are based on 100,000 documents and cite interviews with former Trump family associates.
The report also says that Trump’s parents left their children over $1 billion, which at that time would have been subject to about a $550 million tax bill. However, the Trumps paid only $52.2 million, or 5%, on that source of income.
As a result, the New York tax office has begun an investigation into the Trump Foundations, which is already being sued by New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood who says that President Trump broke state and federal law by mismanaging the charity.
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