Rebuttals to Eric Trump’s Talking Points about His Daddy’s Corruption
Yesterday, the Oversight Democrats released a report showing the fraction of foreign payments Donald Trump accepted from foreign governments while President that they were able to document before James Comer helped Trump cover it all up. The topline result is that while President, Trump was known to have received over $7 million from foreign entities, of which $5.5 came from China.
As I’ll show below, that’s a very partial number, but by itself it says that Trump made as much from foreign governments while President as the entirety of the funds that James Comer has spent a year lying about with respect to private citizen Hunter Biden over a longer period of time.
It’s not Hunter Biden who has been on the foreign take. It’s Donald Trump. And while this report mentions that Trump is basically an employee of Mohammed bin Salman through his LIV Golf relationship, that funding, and a number of other foreign payments Trump and his Oval Office employee family members received is not reflected in the topline of this report.
Thanks to some of my best trolls, I’ve had a flood of stupid MAGAts repeating the talking points fed them to make them comfortable with the fact that Donny was effectively for sale to a slew of foreign governments. So I wanted to talk about how silly those excuses for selling access are.
Start with Eric Trump’s supposed rebuttal, a claim that Trump Organization donated their foreign profits to the US Treasury.
First, Trump Org only did this for a subset of their properties.
[T]he policy substantially limited the scope of “profits” it covered to those (1) “generated from foreign governments’ patronage from wholly-owned Properties,” and (2) “generated from management fees earned from managed hotels and condominium-hotels attributed to foreign governments’ patronage.”71 By excluding non-wholly owned and non-hotel Trump properties, the policy omitted potentially significant sums from the already truncated category of emoluments that it covered. For example, this report identifies more than $1 million in foreign emoluments paid to Trump World Tower in New York which fall outside the scope of The Trump Organization’s policy.
But even ignoring Trump Organization’s famously dodgy accounting, it’s not enough to donate profits. That’s because the revenues permitted Trump to have a DC-based influence peddling shop.
Revenues paid to Trump International DC (which most trolls appear not to understand Trump leased the Old Post Office only from 2016 until 2022; it was not a pre-existing hotel that just happened to become inconvenient when Trump became President) effectively provided Trump a way to have foreign governments pay lease to the US government for a private influence peddling location for him during his Administration, which he then sold for a tidy profit.
A review of financial documents regarding the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., provided by the General Services Administration (GSA) revealed that while President Trump claimed on required financial disclosures that he made $156 million in employment income from the hotel between 2016 and 2020, the hotel in fact lost more than $73 million during this period.74 Reflecting the serious financial problems at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., annual financial statements obtained by the Committee also reveal that one of President Trump’s holding companies, DJT Holdings LLC, injected tens of millions of dollars into the Trump International Hotel as loans, the vast majority of which were never repaid and were later converted to capital contributions. The hotel’s significant losses were due in part to the hotel’s fixed costs, including general and administrative expenses, sales and marketing expenses, and property operations and maintenance.75 Given that the hotel was operating at a significant loss, foreign government revenue would have helped to cover a portion of these fixed costs, even if alleged “profits” were donated.
Plus, there’s no transparency to how Trump Org decided something was a foreign payment. The report notes that Mazars had no accounting for what qualified as foreign payments — meaning, however Trump Org made this calculation, they didn’t share it with their accountants.
Mazars also indicated that it had no specific accounting of foreign government spending at Trump-owned properties. This is stunning in light of former President Trump’s pledge that Trump hotel properties would donate “all profits from foreign government payments” to the U.S. Treasury and the policy announced by The Trump Organization purportedly intended to effectuate that pledge.
And for the things that Oversight did get paperwork for, there were clear discrepancies. The Mazars documentation doesn’t cover all the known foreign spending at Trump International, for example.
Last Congress, based on records provided by GSA, former Committee Chairwoman Maloney estimated that total foreign government payments to just the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., from 2017 through 2019 would have been $3,787,485.117 This estimate was based on the hotel’s representations that, for these three years, it had identified $355,687 in foreign government profits (which it had remitted to DJT Holdings LLC, another Trump-owned entity; which DJT Holdings LLC had remitted to the Trump Corporation; and which the Trump Corporation in turn had “donated” to the U.S. Treasury on behalf of The Trump Organization).118 However, only a fraction of this foreign government spending at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., is reflected in the documents provided by Mazars and discussed in this report.
Of particular concern, Mazars didn’t turn over guest ledgers for Trump’s Inauguration, a period when the hotel was wildly inflating prices and hosting any number of foreign visitors.
Also, James Comer intervened in Mazars’ compliance before they had provided “any documents relating to Russia, South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil.”
There are other big gaps. For example, Mazars didn’t turn over any documentation of other properties that hosted significant numbers of foreign visitors.
Mazars also did not provide any ledgers before the subpoena was terminated for properties which reportedly received a large number of foreign government visitors, including: Trump Turnberry Hotel and Resort in Scotland; Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, Illinois; and Trump International Hotel in New York, New York.
And Mazars didn’t provide any documentation pertaining to 80% of Trump’s properties.
The Committee did not receive from Mazars any documents regarding at least 80% of Donald Trump’s business entities. For many other entities, Mazars produced only a single document.
Finally there were two specific expenses that Mazars claimed to have no record of. Mazars claimed to have no do documentation of ICBC’s nearly two-million dollar a year lease in Trump Tower.
Counsel for Mazars informed the Committee that following a comprehensive search of its records, the firm identified no responsive documents in its database relating to the “Industrial and Commercial Bank of China” or “ICBC.” The absence of these records from Mazars’s files raises troubling concerns about The Trump Organization’s candor with its accounting firm.179
As noted above, this was included in the report, based on other publicly available sources.
Mazars similarly claimed to have no documentation of a $20 million loan from Daewoo.
Spreadsheets prepared by Jeffrey McConney, The Trump Organization’s former controller, reflect that former President Trump’s “LOANS PAYABLE” included a loan for $19,760,000 owed to “L/P Daewoo” as of June 30, 2015.113 This loan remained outstanding until Daewoo was “bought out of its position on July 5, 2017.”114 Critically, as Forbes reported: “Although the debt appeared on The Trump Organization’s internal paperwork, it did not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosure reports, documents he was required to submit to federal officials while running for president and after taking office.”115 Yet Mazars informed the Committee’s Democratic staff it had no records to produce regarding the Daewoo loan.
I believe this payment was not included in this report. But its an instance where Trump’s disclosures covered up a key financial tie.
Finally, there are a number of things that this report did not include in its top line conclusion. Along with the LIV partnership mentioned above, Jared Kushner’s financial entanglements, and Ivanka’s trademarks, this report didn’t include Huwaei or CEFC in its emoluments accounting.
Finally, the documents provided by Mazars also record expenditures at Trump-owned properties by two Chinese companies that are closely aligned with the P.R.C.: Huawei; and Hongkong Huaxin Petroleum Unlimited, a subsidiary of CEFC China Energy (CEFC). While the government of the P.R.C. has been linked with both Huawei and CEFC, given the opacity and convoluted ownership and financing arrangements of these companies, this report does not classify their expenditures among the emoluments paid by the P.R.C. to Trump-owned businesses. However, the receipt by former President Trump’s businesses of expenditures from these entities while Mr. Trump was in office created conflicts of interest.
The Huawei payment (for a conference in Las Vegas) was minor, but CEFC maintained a property in Trump Tower for the entirety of Trump’s term.
In 2012, Hong Kong Huaxin Petroleum Company Limited—a wholly owned subsidiary of CEFC—bought an apartment in Trump World Tower for $5.25 million dollars.235 Hong Kong Huaxin Petroleum Company Limited maintained this property throughout the Trump presidency.236 Records provided to the Committee by Mazars and court documents indicate that Hong Kong Huaxin Petroleum Limited paid a standard common charge of $3,177.20 every month in 2018.237 CEFC listed its apartment at Trump World Tower for sale on October 20, 2020.238 On January 26, 2022, CEFC sold the unit to an anonymous LLC named “845UN 78B LLC” for $4.625 million.239
Assuming that the base charges did not change during the four years of the Trump presidency, Hong Kong Huaxin Petroleum Limited paid Trump World Tower at least $152,505 during the four years of the Trump presidency.240
James Comer has falsely claimed that because Joe Biden’s brother and son paid back personal loans to the then ex-VP with money they were paid by CEFC-associated businesses, it amounts to being paid by CEFC directly (again, during a period when Biden was a private citizen). But meanwhile, by halting Mazars’ compliance with a Congressional subpoena before it was done, Comer may, himself, be covering up details of Trump’s own payments from CEFC-related funds.
Trump ran the most blatantly corrupt, self dealing, for-profit presidency in American history. Full stop.
From a purely transactional foreign policy to even cashing in on his coup attempt.
You are correct. Receipts from foreign governments, not just “profits”, should have been disclosed and donated. Those revenues help keep the properties in operation.
The Oversight Report is just the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t include the international licensing and management agreements, nor the business dealings with foreign nationals with chummy relationships to foreign governments.
Maybe we should push for an amendment to the 14th Amendment that says a person with international business dealings, including international Charitable Foundations, is not eligible unless they make full disclosure of their activities.
I remember quite a bit of reporting and discussions of the emolument clause in early 2017, but after a court ruling in December of 2017, the topic lost the media’s interest.
Josh Gerstein, Judge dismisses suits claiming Trump violated emoluments clause, on Politico: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/21/judge-dismisses-suits-emoluments-312610 .
I’m having a hard time finding out what ultimately happened to the Emoluments matter in Congress.
The perfect phone call happened. Remember, congress was pushing the narrative that Hillary was somehow profiting off of the Uranium One deal up to the final days of 2018, all before the democrats gained control of the House. By the time dems got around to looking at emoluments they were overshadowed by more recent events.
Dems did try at the time, but couldn’t get any enforceable subpoenas.
Wikipedia isn’t always accurate, but it’s often useful for pointing one to helpful references. The page on Trump pointed out “In Focus: The Emoluments Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.” Congressional Research Service. August 19, 2020. Re: that particular suit, it says:
“In Blumenthal, et al. v. Trump, No. 17-1154 (D.D.C.), 201 Members of Congress alleged violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause through then-President Trump’s receipt of foreign-government payments at Trump properties, foreign licensing fees, and regulatory benefits, among other things. Then-President Trump moved to dismiss on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing and that he had not received any prohibited “emoluments.” The district court ruled that the plaintiffs had standing, reasoning that these Members of Congress suffered an injury-in-fact through the deprivation of a voting opportunity under the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and that the plaintiffs had stated a claim against the President. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed the district court’s standing decision, holding that the Members lacked standing because individual Members of Congress may not sue based on alleged institutional injury to the legislature as a whole. The Supreme Court denied review in Blumenthal in October 2020.” SCOTUS also mooted two other pending suits after Trump left office.
That clause is fairly useless for the courts to enforce. The best and perhaps only option is impeachment and removal by the Senate.
In December 2016, the esteemed trio of Eisen, Painter and Tribe coughed up a detailed explanation of how the Emoluments clause would definitely be able to be used to stop Trump from profiting from foreign governments, in several ways, move on, nothing to be seen here. It was utterly tone deaf to the political realities, let alone the lack of standing argument.
I never understood the courts willingness to turn a blind eye toward these payments.
Unless you’ve paid attention to the transactional “gift giving” happening in the Supreme Court.
The GSA should have pulled the lease on inauguration day, but when you’re in charge of the GSA…
Let’s also remember that the head of the GSA (Emily Murphy) also held up transition because she claimed to be unsure that Biden won. That gave Defendant-1 several weeks to bury bones.
I suspect the courtier press will report this as the final number even though EW clearly shows this as a floor. I’m not holding my breath for MSM or Comer accountability for spiking the real story.
Leonard Leo appreciates your attention to detail?
Ew,
I believe you. The table and evidence presented are enormous sums of money barred by the US Constitution emoluments clause. Trump and his children as government employees during 45th presidency are all willful violators of the emoluments clause. Now the 46th presidency per SCOTUS has made 45th emoluments violations moot. Well then another cause of action should and must be brought. E. Jean Carroll and able legal team have found a way to bring a civil action which venue is less encumbered by criminal statutes of limitations.
It’s hysterical to read these comments from Eric ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ Trump.
I also wish the MSM’s investigative journalists would delve deeper into the memberships of Trump’s country clubs. There is Steve Bannon’s good buddy, Guo Wengui who joined Mar-a-Lago, and then there is Joseph “Joey No Socks” Cinque, a convicted felon with exclusive access to Trump’s Bedminster NJ club. Cinque has not only set up lunches between Trump and possible Chinese spy, Tao Liu, he reportedly helped Liu join Bedminster and facilitated a Trump Tower lease for Liu. All while Trump was in office.
Pro Publica has done some excellent work on this scandal, but the larger press outlets have ignored it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/liu-tao-trump-meeting-china-investigation
Can you imagine if James Comer had a photo of Joe Biden sharing lunch with an American felon and suspected Chinese spy at a club where all of the money flows directly into Biden’s pocket? A photo exactly like the photo from the Pro Publica link above.
I mean, come on. Where is the equivalent outrage?
Jamal Kashoggi’s life must have seemed such a small price to pay for so much money.
I remember the breaking news alert about Ivanka being caught using her personal email accounts to conduct government business that suddenly disappeared from every news page when Kushner gave the Saudis the green light to kill him.
This. 100%.
His killing is one of many things that fries my bacon. I so want someone to press Nikki Haley on what she knew, when she knew it – esp. given the date of her exit letter and actual exit.
Exactly. Every time I see or read about Haley– whether in a town-hall meeting, in a debate, a campaign rally, an interview with a journalist, or ANYTHING in the news media, I keep waiting for someone, anyone, to ask her about what she knows about the Kashoggi murder. But it seems no one is demanding answers. smh
“annual financial statements obtained by the Committee also reveal that one of President Trump’s holding companies, DJT Holdings LLC, injected tens of millions of dollars into the Trump International Hotel as loans, the vast majority of which were never repaid and were later converted to capital contributions.”
It points to how the Family Business is a glorified check-kiting operation, and it also makes me wonder how much of a tax writeoff he was able to take on both the losses and the loans.
Self Dealing with Presidential immunity. Recall the White House press conferences every quarter that showed the cancelled check from Trump’s *personal account* as part of the Mar A Lago Golf Club to show he “donated” his salary. He availed himself of the tax breaks he signed while pocketing millions more from foreign and domestic sources.
NY State shut down the Trump Charitable Foundation because the Trumps were treating it like their own personal ATM.
The Trump CFO has been convicted of tax evasion.
NY State is pursuing civil fraud and unjust enrichment claims and should be laying out its case next week.
.
The NY civil fraud case has the best chance of derailing Trump’s business model. Engoron has been thorough and the state appellate courts find his rulings persuasive.
The big question is whether Engoron’s decision to appoint a receiver is upheld. If it is, that would affect the NY state legal entities and ALL assets they own worldwide. It would take the businesses out of Trump’s ownership and control, and put them in the hands of the court. It would assess the assets and liabilities, and sell whatever assets were needed to pay the liabilities, something Trump religiously avoids doing.
Regardless, the NY state-based assets would have to be sold, because the Trumps will have been barred from conducting business, directly and indirectly, in NY, owing to his massive fraud.
Wouldn’t there be a likelihood of delving deeper into Trump’s books expeditiously should his businesses have to be sold by a third party? Would Trump have a right to challenge such a ruling at that point?
Appeals about decisions regarding a receiver and the amount and payment of any judgment will likely be filed and decided together.
If a receiver is appointed, the court automatically becomes the owner of the assets. Acting as the court’s agent, the receiver would document important steps and decisions along the way, and file periodic reports. She would audit the books, to determine the state of play that exists as of the time the receivership commenced. That process would include identifying assets, determining their fair market value, and verifying the validity and amount of debts due. The Trumps would have a right to what’s left after debts are paid.
Trump’s ability to bog the receiver down in litigation is limited. The companies and their assets will no longer be his. Any costs the receiver incurs in dealing with his claims would come out of what used to be the Trumps’ assets.
Interesting. Of course money trails would be included and multiple autopsies of Trump entities performed.
I hope to live another decade or two to see it all documented.
Receiver has already found $40 million of unreported payments yet nothing on that so far. James hasn’t even demanded that it be clawed back in her filing.
I know this sounds crazy, but throughout the decades law officials have let him get away with every possible financial crime and I just feel in my bones that it’ll somehow happen here too, like Engeron just slapping him on his knuckles and letting him walk.
On this second portion of the case, that is.
I sincerely hope I am wrong but it seems there is no offense so egregious as to sway the Trump supporters. In their minds, 7 million is chump change to a billionaire.
“I could shoot someone on fifth avenue and not lose any votes.” His own words.
Then Covid 19 happened on his watch. Thousands dying daily, jobs lost in the millions, and peoples lives were destroyed because his policy was tantamount to DEMOCIDE, and they still cheer.
The Biden administration and democrats have distinguished themselves as a party that actually tries to govern. The prospect of extreme chaos from another republican administration should,I hope be enough to win in November. Combating corruption can be another way to distinguish themselves. They can and should start with firing Menendez into the sun.
“Firing Menendez into the sun”? Who’s gonna pay for that?
Expulsion from the Senate and excommunication from the party is fine with me.
Then we sit just back and watch the wheels of justice roll.
CEFC bought the apartment in Trump Tower in 2012 for $5.25 million and sold it in 2022 for $4.625 million to the anonymous 845UN 78B LLC. If that LLC is related to Trump he earned a profit of at least $0.625 million, but probably more given the fact that it will be sold again for a price no doubt higher than $5.25 million.
Trump World Tower, 845 United Nations Plaza, #78B – 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths = 845UN 78B LLC.
Adding: According to the report, it is known that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, India, and Afghanistan all owned or leased property in Trump World Tower. Of those, on p.76 it says:
“In 2001, Saudi Arabia purchased the entire 45th floor of Trump World Tower in New York for a reported sale price of $4.5 million. Saudi Arabia owned this property for all four years of the Trump Presidency.”
George and Kellyanne Conway once had a condo there. I wonder if either of them know anything about 78B.
I think your numbers are mixed up.
If someone bought an apt in 2012 for $5.25m and sold it ten years later for $4.625m, that’s a loss, not a profit.
I think the point is CEFC bought it, and 10 years later sold it to Trump at a (by then deep) discount.
Trump sold it for $5.25 and only had to pay 4.625 to buy it back. The .625 loss to the
Chinese was the vig for Trumps services.
In a normal transaction, you would be correct. But if a Trump entity sold it to an influence-buyer at say, $5 million, and that buyer sold it five years later back to another Trump entity for $4 million, Trump effectively pocketed the difference – and he still has the condo to resell again.
I think the thought is If CEFC bought the apartment from Trump in 2012 for an above-market $5.25 million and, after a decade’s real estate appreciation, sold it to Trump in 2022 for $4.625 million…
The main what-if in that is speculating the anonymous 845UN 78B LLC is related to Trump.
Another possibility comes to mind. In 2018 CEFC put the unit on the market because they leased space up the street. Jr. came in and convinced them to stay. Part of that agreement could be Trump Inc purchases the property (at either fair market value or more likely a % above the next best offer) should they decide to sell in the future. They pulled the trigger October 20, 2020 and finalized the following January.
Why does 20 October 20 resonate? It’s not just the election two weeks away, for which the Chinese had surely seen the writing on the wall. Or a weariness at the phrase “China virus.”
Trump had “recovered” from Covid, even from the steroid high that seemed to confuse him significantly (more than usual) afterward. By that time he knew the savior vaccines weren’t coming before November 3.
It may come to me. But it will come to someone else here much sooner!
The former guy is a walking crime wave. The fact that he can even be considered the leading candidate for the Republican Party speaks volumes to failure of the lack of qualifications required to run for president. The guy crimes in plain sight and all the GOP does is run cover for him. How the system has evolved is far from what the founders intended.
It’s called a constitutional amendment — that’s the only way you’re going to change this.
Or you could try reforming media so that they shame the fuck out of scofflaws instead of both-sidesing them against qualified law-abiding candidates. Or you could try reforming the political parties.
Knock yourself out.
At least sisyphusian tasks give you something to do! All of the above!
Seems it’s yet to be decided if a (14/section 3) constitutional amendment is enough to be able to change this. To me, it’s very clear that Trump ‘engaged’ in the insurrection, and he is an holder of office. Textualists be damned?
Oh yea, “knock yourself out”.
Don’t wake me up, let me dream of a just scotus.
Today’s GOP is little more than a criminal protection racket to shelter one man, Donald Trump.
How the system has evolved is far from what the founders intended but not what the GOP intended. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC7937Fl-xk, paraphrasing starting at 32:43 …just a matter of degree, Reagan’s “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'” you, shows clearly the line to Trump and Republicans (Bannon’s “Deconstructing the administrative state”) We should get rid of government and tear it all down
I remembered hearing about Ivanka’s business relationship with China. I’m confused why this is not currently mentioned in Hunter B. discussions. I did a search on “ivanka chinese licenses.” There’s an AP News article from 11/6/2018 mentioning that the Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka. Same date, Reuters (and other major news outlets) adds there are 16 new trademarks for her fashion brand.
Same date, Washington Post writes: “The approvals by Beijing on Oct. 13 were notable for their timing, coming just as Chinese and U.S. officials were seeking to restart trade talks that had collapsed amid acrimony. They also raised eyebrows for covering a grab-bag of products, including electoral hardware in a country not exactly known for its elections.” And trademarks for senior homes, veterinary services, batteries, wedding gowns and sausage casings. And more.
And there is this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-zte-order-after-china-gave-millions-to-trump-organization-tied-project-2018-5
The Trump clan used his first year in office to cash in off of China. As did the Kushner family.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/spicer-kushner-not-involved-family-s-chinese-eb-5-visa-n756406
An AP November 7, 2018, article names what’s “electoral hardware” in your quote from the WaPo “voting machines.”
I remember my astonishment when reading that back then. What use would Ivanka Trump make of voting machines?
Three possible reasons:
1) She did nothing with those trademarks, and even shut down any business she had in China. Seems the Trump brands took a major hit.
2) China has a long history of not enforcing Intellectual Property (IP) laws, many western companies found that the factories were producing their products after hours, using the same material and labor and not being compensated.
3) China can cancel those trademarks at any time. See 1 as to why they haven’t taken this step.
China’s uniqueness aside, there’s also the standard requirement that a mark be used within a certain time or it’s lost.
In that case she lost money, since she was still required to pay the fees. As I recall, they only expedited the approval process.
OT: NBC is reporting that a Florida resort has canceled an event sponsored by Marjorie Taylor Greene because it was to be a celebration of the third January 6 anniversary. Guess they’ll need to reschedule to MagaLardo.
https:// http://www.orlandosentinel.com/2024/01/05/kissimmee-resort-cancels-marjorie-taylor-greenes-jan-6-event/
Hi, I looked up that purchasing company, CEO is listed, of helpful…
https://www.nycompanyregistry.com/companies/845un-78b-llc/
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We are moving to a new minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is far too short it will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. Thanks. /~Rayne]
youtube of BIDEN speech – from journo: KEEP IT. SHARE IT.
https://twitter.com/Victorshi2020/status/1743381503260709283
Yeah it’s very good. Thanks for sharing it.
OT: SCOTUS has granted cert to the CO Trump disqualification case. Oral arguments on 2/8.
This:
This is every single one of the 11 domestic and 3 international golf courses Trump Org owned from 2016-2021, and every single facility under Trump branding whether managed by Trump Org (ie. Ferry Point NY) or not (ie. Trump World Golf Club, Dubai).
As I’ve written before there are myriad ways to launder cash through a golf course resort. Pisses me off immensely the Trump Org courses haven’t been cracked open to look at the sources of income.
Nice reminder and useful illustration about how much information Trump never gave to his accountants. That alone made the compilations they generated false and worth less than the paper they were printed on, which might be another useful observation for Judge Engoron to consider in rendering his final judgment.
As Mazars wasn’t hired to do audits for Trump, why would Mazars care less about where Trump’s money was coming from? As he was going to give very little, if any, information to anybody, as required, all Trump cared about was giving and all Mazars cared about was getting a word for a category with a number and then throwing that number on a financial report or tax return.
I think the only reasons the Trump Organization would send Mazars more than that would be
1. Trump had Mazars handle all the general ledger work, or
2. Mazars received complete general ledger files to peruse for tax prep as they didn’t trust Trump.
Rayne, having lived in the exclusive world of golf for the two years I spent co-writing a book about the game, I share your frustration about the general let-it-slide attitude that seems to apply to Trump’s exploitation of that world. He uses it in many ways; until LIV perhaps the least successful of these was to make money, but LIV (and the craven PGA) have turned that around for him.
Less obvious are things you focus on, like the clear potential for money-laundering. I too am frustrated at not seeing anyone, anywhere pursue this. I wouldn’t expect to find Florida doing it; I don’t know how complicit the UK has been; but New York should have a bead on his courses there–or the one(s) he wished to build, like his Faux Winged Foot in Westchester County.
Least prosecutable is Trump’s not-original but seemingly successful way of using golf to gain influence–at least–and possibly yet more exploitable intelligence within the almost completely closed club of white Christian men who have run this country since its founding, and are holding on desperately now.
Adder: I should have said *rich* white Christian men. It was lazy of me to assume that everyone knows golf is not generally a game for the disadvantaged.