Three days after our story on @realDonaldTrump, @DeutscheBank and Chicago runs, I get a FOIA response with 2,000+ pages of documents. A fun Friday afternoon and evening awaits....
No surprise here, but interesting to see up-close how for every condo unit that @realDonaldTrump sold, money went straight to @DeutscheBank to repay Trump's defaulted loan.
Here's one example of an all-cash purchase in April 2012.
So many anonymous shell companies buying units. Here's just one.
Here's a $2 million+ purchase by an LLC – Millenium New Ventures LLC, with "Millennium" misspelled – registered to what looks like a mailbox in a UPS Store. google.com/search?q=40+e+…
These documents are part of a long-running dispute over the property taxes owed on Trump Chicago. (This has been covered extensively in local media.) Classic @realDonaldTrump legal strategy of filing neverending motions and appeals in the hopes of grinding down opponents.
There's not a whole lot of interesting stuff in these documents, most of which I've at least skimmed.
Too bad, but that's the way it often goes with FOIA.
But there is something, which I just re-found in an old NY court document, which folks might be interested in....
Want to see a list of the original purchasers of units in Trump Chicago?
I haven't scrubbed these names – there are a lot of them (9 pages just like this one below).
I have a few stray thoughts on @DeutscheBank and @realDonaldTrump in the wake of yesterday's story about the Chicago debacle.
Warning: This thread raises many more questions than it answers. There is still *so much* we don't know about Trump's finances. nytimes.com/2020/10/27/bus…
1. Why did DB release collateral on a Trump loan the day after the 2016 election?
It might be coincidence.
But recall that DB swung into cleanup mode post-election. It sold a big Russian loan. It banned staff from publicly saying “Trump.” It considered modifying Trump’s loans.
What makes this even weirder: DB on 11/9/16 released more collateral than it had to. Trump had repaid $24M; DB released $56M.
I’m told this was a *clerical error* that DB corrected. But it adds to the impression that this was part of the bank's effort to get distance from Trump.
Trump's lenders forgave or canceled $287M in debt. The vast majority was related to Trump's Chicago skyscraper, which he built using borrowed money.
When Trump defaulted in 2008, creditors could have tried to seize the property. But they decided it wasn’t worth the fight.
Instead, hedge funds and private equity firms threw up their hands and forgave most of what Trump owed.
Two of those firms were run by men who later got roles in the Trump administration: @stevenmnuchin1 and Stephen Feinberg, who leads a White House advisory panel.
Ken Curson was Kushner’s handpicked successor to run the NY @observer. He was also in the running for a job in the Trump admin. He was arrested today on federal cyber-stalking charges.
We reported in 2018 on how Kurson had withdrawn from consideration for the federal job after the FBI began investigating Kurson for allegedly harassing a New York doctor as his marriage unraveled. nytimes.com/2018/07/26/bus…
The board of directors of Leon Black's Apollo is launching an investigation of Black's ties to Epstein in wake of last week's @nytimes story. wsj.com/articles/apoll…
This article describes the Apollo investigation as coming at Black's request. He hopes "to put to rest renewed speculation into the nature of his ties to Mr. Epstein."
[One way to put speculation to rest would be to explain why he paid Epstein >$50M for tax/estate services.]
Goldman's then-CEO, @lloydblankfein, was among the senior execs who were exposed in this scandal.
Yet the bank is getting off with a financial penalty that probably won't dent its quarterly profits (since it's already set aside money for a settlement). nytimes.com/2018/11/22/bus…
But wait – @wsj is reporting that Goldman will admit wrongdoing and an Asian subsidiary will plead guilty.
That is a more severe penalty than I said in my original tweet (but still not likely to have a very significant impact on the bank). wsj.com/articles/goldm…
NEW: It's the world's most expensive "peanut" –– @realDonaldTrump and his companies owe more than $620 million, according to a @nytimes tally from his federal tax returns.