New report connects Trump organization with the largest tax fraud case in New York City history
The Trump Organization, not unlike the Trump administration, is rife with stories of corruption and grift, incompetence due to the cutting of corners, and general crapulence. ProPublica and New York Public Radio station WNYC have published a brand-new joint investigative story about how Trump’s business interests in 1980s-1990s New York City included the bribing of tax assessors in order to lower The Apprentice host’s property taxes. Speaking with five former city employees and one former Trump organization employee, the reporters heard testimony implicating Trump’s business interests more directly in connection with a real estate housing scam that came to light in 2002.
The five former city employees were among more than a dozen who had been indicted in 2002, in what The New York Times called the “largest tax fraud case in the history of New York City government.” Trump has always maintained that he was ignorant of any of this happening, including the claim that in “one instance, tax payments on property owned by Donald Trump were instead applied to the account of a corrupt property owner.”
The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten said that the ProPublica report was old news, and that all previous investigations had cleared Donald Trump and the Trump Organization of any wrongdoing. Pointing out that “at no time did the Trump Organization or any of its employees or principals ever pay anyone for the purpose of unlawfully obtaining a lower tax valuation,” Garten called the report “reckless” and questioned the outlet’s journalistic ethics.
However, this is not simply a re-reporting of what happened before. ProPublica and WNYC report now that two of the former New York City employees say they took bribes themselves “from middlemen representing the Trump Organization to lower assessments on 40 Wall St. after Trump took over the skyscraper in 1995.” Frank Valvo, a former city assessor who served prison time for the fraud, says he remembers a co-worker telling him that the Trump Organization had agreed to pay bribes, saying there was elation between him and the other corrupt city worker.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/11/1926558/-New-report-connects-Trump-organization-with-the-largest-tax-fraud-case-in-New-York-City-history?detail=emaildkre