New York state tax authorities are investigating after the New York Times reported that Donald Trump engaged in “dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud”, as he and his siblings took control of a real estate empire built by Fred C Trump, the president’s late father.
“The tax department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation,” the state taxation authority told the Washington Post.
In a blockbuster investigative report built on interviews with the elder Trump’s former employees and more than 100,000 pages of documents including tens of thousands of pages of confidential records, the Times unfolds the story of how Trump “received the equivalent today of at least $413m from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day”.
Little of the information had previously come to light. Its publication, which was subject to blanket denials by a lawyer for the president and by the White House but which was not refuted in detail, fundamentally alters the visible facts establishing the centerpoint of Trump’s identity: his wealth.
The investigation drew on Fred Trump’s tax documents but did not unearth the president’s personal tax filings, which Donald Trump has refused to disclose.
The story of a nine-figure inheritance contradicts Trump’s portrayal of himself, going back more than 40 years, as a self-made man. He has characterized his father’s real estate empire as a “tiny” concern and said he only ever took a $1m loan from his father, which he paid back with interest.
“I got peanuts,” Trump told one interviewer. “My father didn’t leave a great fortune. It was Brooklyn and Queens real estate. I built this empire and I did it by myself. Nobody did it for me.”
In fact, the Times reported, Trump was the beneficiary of “295 streams of revenue that Fred Trump created over five decades to enrich his son”. That largesse made Donald Trump a millionaire by the age of eight, the report says.
Fred Trump was one of the most prolific real…
