1/ Hats off to the New York Times, which published its latest installment in its tax series today. In my eyes, this is the most impressive follow-up they have done to the original story. I’ll be sharing additional thoughts here over the next hour or so. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
2/ The story describes a waterfall of potential conflicts of interest, connected to money coming into Trump's hotels and clubs from various tycoons, lobbyists, foreign governments and so on. This type of reporting is extremely difficult. Let me explain why.
3/ According to federal guidelines, the president has to disclose who pays him money directly, even if the payments are as small as a couple hundred bucks. But the rules do not require the president to disclose payments that flow through his companies. It's a massive loophole.
4/ Since Trump holds his business empire through a web of shell companies, the loophole allows him to avoid disclosing much about who is actually paying him. He doesn't have to disclose tenants in his buildings, nor guests at his hotels, nor members of his clubs.
5/ Since the Trump Organization isn't disclosing who is paying, the way that information becomes public is through investigative reporting. For instance, @Z_Everson has devoted himself to tracking who spends money at Trump's hotel in DC. Follow him -- he's absolutely amazing.
6/ I spent a lot of time figuring out who pays Trump rent via his commercial buildings. In my book, "White House, Inc." I list over 150 tenants paying an estimated $177M a year in rent. I laid out a dizzying set of conflicts this presents in this excerpt. vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/h…
7/ One missing part of the puzzle has been who is paying Trump via his golf properties and clubs. We know the potential conflicts there are huge, because the USA Today did some great reporting on this in 2017. usatoday.com/story/news/201…
8/ This new story from the NYT does a fantastic job of expanding what we know about who is paying Trump via those properties. Part of the reason the Times was able to do this is that they got membership rosters for Mar-a-Lago and Trump Bedminster. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
9/ But part of why they could do this is dogged reporting. They must have looked through an endless stream of posts social media posts, then figured out who the people in the photos were, then figured out what business those people had before the government. That's grueling work.
10/ It's no wonder the story has 10 names on the byline and another 9 at the bottom, for people who contributed research or reporting.
Equally impressive: The NYT reports new details about President Trump's personal involvement in his businesses -- after he took office.
11/ The Times reports that Trump wants to know about the operations ("He would quiz managers on the banquet business.")
He wants to know about capacity ("Are we full on the outside patio?")
And he wants to weigh in on the personnel. ("He told Eric to have a manager fired.")
12/ Trump didn't get out of business. He held onto ownership and delegated the day-to-day tasks to his kids. And, according to this reporting, he kept a hand in the operations as well.
It reminds me of a remarkable quote from Trump, uttered 9 days before he took office.
13/ "I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. I don't like the way that looks, but I would be able to do that if I wanted to. I would be the only one that would be able to do that." -Donald Trump, January 11, 2017.
1/ Trump has indeed lost a fortune as president. One of the great ironies is that if he'd just divested at the start, then plowed the proceeds into the S&P 500, Trump would have avoided all these ethics complications--and he would be hundreds of millions of dollars richer today.
2/ That's what the ethics experts suggested that he do at the time. Trump, however, insisted on hanging onto his properties. At the time, it wasn't heard to tell that this was a risky political decision, which could mire his presidency in ethical controversies.
3/ But at the start of the presidency, it was difficult to tell whether this would be a good or bad *business* decision.
Would Trump make money on the presidency? Or would politics damage his companies? We didn't know, because no one had really done something like this before.
1/ The New York Times released their latest installment in their terrific Trump taxes series today. I've got some thoughts on this one as well, which I'll be outlining here over the next hour or so. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
2/ The story really includes two stories. First, there's one about cash flowing out of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Second, there's another about a train project that Trump's partner in the hotel has talked to about the president. We'll start with the cash.
3/ On 9/15/2016, weeks before the election, Trump signed a document to secure a $30M loan against the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, which he owns in a 50-50 partnership with fellow billionaire Phil Ruffin. You can see the amount and the signature on these documents.
1/ In a Trump Tower press conference, held nine days before he took office, Donald Trump described his plan to separate his business from his presidency. Over the last few years, the key pillars of that plan have crumbled. Let’s go through them one-by-one. c-span.org/video/?421482-…
2/ Promise 1 of Trump’s ethics plan: “No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency,” his attorney said. Trump did at least one new foreign deal anyway.
3/ We know that the president did new a new foreign deal in office because he himself admitted it—on a financial disclosure report filed with federal ethics officials. You can see here that he sold $3.2M of land in the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29, 2018. extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.n…
1/ On the topic of China, it's worth remembering that the president's business has accepted millions of dollars from a state-owned bank in China while Trump has served in office. Here's how it worked.
2/ Here's a debt prospectus, tied to Trump Tower, which shows that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China paid annual rent of roughly $1.9 million to Trump Tower Commercial LLC. You can see that the lease was set to expire on 10/31/2019 -- midway through Trump's first term.
3/ If there is any question about who owns Trump Tower Commercial LLC, see Trump's financial disclosure report, which shows that the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust owns 100%, through several shell companies. Here's the document: extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.n…
(1/9) When Donald Trump became the president of the United States, his brand got bigger, but it didn’t get better. Just take a look at what happened to Trump National Doral, his golf resort in Miami. forbes.com/sites/danalexa…
(2/9) Here’s a video of the Trump Organization’s tax specialist getting sworn in at a local proceeding where she is going to explain the situation in December 2017, 11 months into Trump’s presidency.
(3/9) “I met with the director of finance, as well as the director of development for all of the Trump Organization,” Trump’s tax representative explains here. “And they mentioned that throughout 2016, because of the political climate, there have been severe ramifications.”
(1/12) From the very start of his presidency, Donald Trump has found small ways to convert power into profit. To better understand this, let’s take a look at the numbers inside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
(2/12) We’ll start with the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee, the group that raised money to celebrate the inaugural festivities. It was headed up by Tom Barrack, one of Trump’s old buddies. A bunch of billionaires poured in money. forbes.com/sites/danalexa…
(3/12) “They all want to kiss the rear of whoever wins the election,” explained @RWPUSA, chief ethics lawyer in the W. Bush administration. One danger is it can start to look like a slush fund. “It’s a potential problem that every decent ethics lawyer knows is a huge issue.”